#rdr2 ao3

[likesomeoneinlovee]

𝐀𝐧 𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭’𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐲 || 𝐀𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐮𝐫 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐧 𝐱 𝐅!𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

word count: 10k +

This was an older fanfic I wrote in my notes a little while ago that I decided to - try - to revive and post while I work on other fics. (I swear I'm gonna write about other characters other than Arthur lmao--)

Summary: ( Based on the stranger mission: ''an artist's way,, in CH4 ) You run into Arthur while on an errand in Saint Denis while he invites you to come with him to Charles Châtenay's gallery. Afterwards you two go out for a drink, then eventually to a local hotel where you find out Arthur had been drawing you in Charles' "style"

Warnings: smut with plot HEAVILY based off the game's mission - Reader briefly mentioned to be a virgin, fingering, unprotected PIV sex, riding, creampie, oral sex M!receiving + F!receiving. Younger woman reader, Arthur's a big boy, canon that he grabs the headboard sorry not sorry.

More and more you’ve found yourself becoming the gang’s “errand boy” which was often Arthur’s job, though he’s been gone more often now, either on bounty’s or doing the dirty work in the gang. So Dutch had you do the clean work. You’d say you didn’t mind it, the running around at least, after all it was one of your only excuses to get away from camp. You’d jump when Pearson needed more herbs or vegetables from the store or if Dutch needed some cigars. You usually went to Saint Denis most of the time, it was the closest to camp after all -and something about running these errands in the city made you feel right at home. The gang was a downgrade from growing up in the city of course, still not completely used to it: the running, it was as if every time you were comfortable everyone had to pack up and move to a whole new location. Hell, sometimes it means crossing states.

You had just walked back to your horse after buying some goods from the general store across the street, packing your purchases into the saddle bags of your hitched horse -some canned fruits and vegetables, cigarettes as per request from most of the people in camp, and some ammo Dutch asked for, just to stock up I suppose. As you worked on buttoning the flap to the saddle bag back down, making sure none of your goods would be seen by people walking by, after all you spent your hard earned -ahem, stolen money- on those things, you could’ve sworn you heard a man ask for directions, a man with a voice as familiar to you as you own.

You looked over your shoulder to see the man, the sandy brown locks under the gambling hat told you enough, why was Arthur in the city? You didn’t think Dutch had any chores for him today, thus why he asked you to go to the store. He held a small card in his hand, looking from the back of it before his gaze fell back on the woman passing, the one he had asked for directions. Once he got them he’d nod to the woman, eyes falling back onto the card as she walked off. 

You’d pat your horse on the neck before walking onto the sidewalk where Arthur stood, he didn’t notice you til’ you tapped on his shoulder. “Arthur?” You were sure he nearly jumped out of his skin. If your voice wasn’t so familiar he probably would’ve elbowed you out of pure defense. 

“Wha–” His brows would furrow together as his mind cranked to figure out your meaning, that was until you pulled your little shopping list out from the satchel swung over your shoulder. “Oh, that.” 

“Christ–! you tryin’ to kill me sneakin’ up on me like that?” He’d pause for a moment as if his brain finally processed that it was you. “The hell are you doing here anyway?”

“Good news, you’ve been replaced.” 

Of course he couldn’t care less about being ‘replaced’ in that department. It was usually a pain in his ass –And honestly you were a pain in his ass too. It’s not that he didn’t like you, you were just ultimately too spunky for his nature. He’d gladly admit you were a good shot, a good killer. So with that you made a good member for this gang. Personality wise he couldn’t help but wince at your jokes while others would laugh, the tiniest amount of attitude that laced each of your sentences. He wasn’t one to like immaturity, especially from someone who was an adult. Though, you were barely even that.

“Do you know where this is?”

“Have fun runnin’ around with that list of yours then. Seems you’re really movin’ on up.” He’d scorn.

He’d look down at the card in his hands, then back up to look around his surroundings.

He handed you the card, the finished paper now warm from him holding it for so long now against your fingertips. It was an address to one of the buildings on this street, you were surprised he hadn’t realized by now.

“That woman didn’t tell you? It’s right on this street.” 

“No.” He’d roll his eyes. “She looked at me like I lost my mind.” 

You’d snicker at that, now walking down the sidewalk with him, both of your boots clicking against the stone sidewalk. Then you stopped in front of the brick building. ”Here, I think.” You’d give that card one last look, noticing the name on the back of the card, you’d squint to see if you were reading it right -Charles Châtenay? you could’ve sworn I heard that name–

My eyes flicked up to the poster on the side of the brick, looks like it was what I thought after all. I usually pick up the paper when I go this route. The route of aimlessly following Dutch’s list as I walk or ride around the city, gives me something to read when I get back to Shady Belle. Seems the artist had an open gallery today. you couldn’t help but snort, the thought of you, Arthur Morgan going to an art gallery full of practically- well, pornography, now that just might be the funniest damn thing you’ve heard all week. -Your immaturity was truly striking.

“Mr. Morgan, Mr. Morgan.” You’d snark. Of course when Arthur wasn’t acting like the man he was -the same man with five-thousand dollars on his head alone, the same who’s murdered more than a person could fathom he was just your regular ol’ suck up.

“Don’t start with that now, I’m already annoyed I gotta go to this thing.” He tapped his boot onto the sidewalk, taking that card back from you and putting it back into his satchel. “Well, ‘less you wanna come in with me. You’d have a field day with this kinda thing. Châtenay seems like a man who’d entertain you anyway.”

You’d think it over for a moment, you could hear chatter already coming from the windows of the building that were open just a crack. Surely you’d find entertainment in it but you were also fond of the arts as well. Though paintings of women laid out nude wouldn’t strike something in you as it would in a man, you’d be surprised if you were the only woman in that building other than the ones on canvas. –At least this would bring some entertainment to your day. 

“Up the stairs and to the right.” He’d recite the directions written on the back of that card. “I think I can remember that.”

“I’ll keep you company. Lead the way– or, shall I? Seeing you’re horrible with directions.”

You two walked into the building together, up the stairs and to the right and you were there. The first hall was filled with sculptures, beautiful paintings hung against the blue walls, the next room you two stepped in was Châtenay’s, you and Arthur’s gaze met with women’s breasts and men’s cocks painted with oils on the canvases. It surely was– something. Arthur tugged his collar to clear his throat. 

The room had more of a variety of guests than you thought, actually more women than men which came as a shock up until you realized these women were actually the models conversing with the other models. They seemed quite proud of their work, respectably so. Arthur had spotted the french artist across the room chatting one of the models up, he wouldn’t want you to get mixed up in his own charades so Arthur would squeeze your shoulder for your attention just for a moment.

“Why don’t you stay here, pretend to be a model or sumthin’, princess. Wouldn’t want you to get your ear talked off by Charles.” 

Your eyes fell on the french artist as he stood distracted across the room, you could barely hear nor understand the words that he was blabbering out through his thick french accent. Something told you maybe it was a good idea for Morgan to handle what he’s gotten himself into with this man before you were stuck talking to someone you could hardly understand, stuck replying with ‘mhm’s’ and ‘uh-huh’s’ as if you knew what he was saying. Although you’d feel a bit awkward standing there and staring at the intimate paintings of both men and women while standing in the same room as the people being portrayed in oil, it’d probably be best for you at least, you were only here to keep Arthur company and today you felt you’d be less of a nuisance to him by obeying his wishes.

– That evening only got more interesting from there on. It was quite ridiculous, you and Arthur couldn’t have been there for more than fifteen minutes before all hell started to break loose. The husbands and wives of the models had practically raided the building before shouting at their spouses, you couldn’t really tell what was happening between Châtenay being attacked by the men and the women, being hit with a variety of chairs, purses, and of course, fists. Before things could get out of hand with you in the mix Arthur came over to you. He had a wide smile on his face, could’ve sworn this was the first time you’ve seen him laugh so hard he had developed tears in the corners of his eyes. 

“Sure thing.”

You watched as Arthur walked away from you all the way to the other side of the gallery leaving you alone with the model’s dressed in their elegant, expensive attire that you could only dream of owning. And unfortunately due to the paintings you now know what’s under the rich clothing.

“You should probably get outta here before you get in the mix of fists, sweetheart–” His voice quickly cut off by a crash as he escorted you out of the gallery. “Wait outside.” He’d pat your shoulder, leaving you standing at the top of the stairs as he left to go help the artist.

“Sure– thing.”  It was like that turned into your only response.

You didn’t really have time to leave with a jest, or something more than two words, not to be a pussy but you really didn’t feel like being hit by a stray flying chair, so you just walked down the stairs and back outside. You’d laugh to yourself as you walked down the street and away from that brick building, of course the highlight of the day only lasted a short moment, it was quick and rushed, but really you didn’t need to stare at those paintings any longer than you already have. -You felt as if Charles or the gallery wouldn’t be mentioned or thought of again, at least in this moment. But you’d be wrong about that. -The sun was setting now, it looked beautiful against all the buildings that made up the city, you found a bench to sit on, figured you’d read that paper you got earlier while you waited for Arthur. Your eyes would skim the words but nothing would really register.

____

A little while had gone by and after the sun finally set, the stars scattered against the dark sky as you stayed patiently waiting on that wooden –and quite uncomfortable bench, constantly finding yourself adjusting and shifting to get more comfortable, ‘course it didn’t work . You heard footsteps, looking up from the newspaper you felt you read about a hundred times by now out of pure boredom you were relieved to see that it was Arthur.

“Jesus, I thought you’d never come back. Why’d you take so long?” 

“Had to escort the dumbass home so he didn’t get killed. Seems he had a whore waiting for him an’ everythin’.” 

You’d let out a short breath at that, not quite a laugh, you felt your body getting a bit tired but you quickly shook off the feeling, rubbing your eyes with the back of your palm before standing from the bench, leaving the paper behind you, you had a bit of a ride back to Shady Belle, wouldn’t want to fall asleep on the back of your horse. You also had to get all that food and goods you bought back to the camp –though you weren’t quite sure how urgent we needed the provision.

You and Arthur started walking down the sidewalk, side-by-side, the night air now nipping at your skin through the thin fabric of your blouse. It had been too long without a good tease from you to purposely annoy him, clearing your throat to prepare to speak.

“How do you know that artist anyway?”

He’d look down at you as he walked, that was a fair question to ask.

“I met him in the saloon –not the big one down the street here, the smaller one. Don’t know if you’ve ever been there.”

You’d shrug. “I’ve passed by it.”

Arthur would nod. “Met him in there and somehow he convinced me to go to that little show. Gave one of his–”  He'd stop his words looking down at you before shaking his head. 

“Nevermind” 

Charles gave him one of his many artworks, a nude woman, an illustration that he embarrassingly kept safely in his satchel since. And now he’d especially not want to tell you, you were already amused that he even went to the damn show which he himself had more fun that he should’ve. Though, to mention, he didn’t start having fun til’ Châtenay was getting his ass handed to him.

You on the other hand were now dying to know what he gave Arthur, –can’t just start a sentence without finishing it. You had a feeling begging him for the answer wouldn’t work of course, you’d try anyway.

“Oh come onnnnnn.” You sneered. “M’sick of you doing that, you’ve been on this earth long enough to realize you can’t just start a sentence without finishing.”

‘N’ I’ve known you long enough to know I shouldn’t be givin’ you any more reasons to laugh at me.”

“I don’t– laugh,” You’d scoff. “Five months isn’t long either, you barely know me.”

Morgan let out a sigh, tying to think of a good excuse to kinda brush away what he said. Something to finish the sentence he started. “He gave me some money, paid me to go to that exhibit. Don’t want you goin’ around thinkin’ I’m a pervert who went for a good time.”

You’d look up to him after he said that. If that’s all it was –money. “I wasn’t thinkin’ that.”

Well, maybe it crossed your mind once or twice. But then again why would he stop himself from saying that? Right now you couldn’t bother to make sense of it, you just shrugged it off. –Now the walk was silent for the most part, there wasn’t really anything to say. Once you got to your horse you’d pat the saddle bag, feeling that your goods hadn’t been stolen, letting out a sigh before turning back to Arthur.

“We should both get back to camp before someone gets worried.”

Really, you didn’t know who would get worried, you’ve stayed the night at a hotel in the city more times than you could count just so you could sleep in a comfortable bed ‘stead of your worn, hard cot. 

“No one will be worried. Come on I’m the one who made you stay out here longer than you intended, I’ll buy you a whiskey or sumthin’.” 

You’d look at him, almost surprised to hear the offer. It was rare for him to be sweet, if that was the right word for offering you a drink. It sounded good, the thought alone of the cool alcohol burning down your throat already waking you up a bit more than you were.

“That’d– that’d be nice.”

_____

Not too long after those words were shared you and Morgan had made it into the saloon, the faint playing of the piano heard from across the street now loud along with the chatter between people sitting and eating at their tables to the men around their table playing poker. Since it was a bit later in the day –the night now fully taking its course, it was like a signal for men and women alike to flood the saloon. You and Arthur had found a booth to be separated from the crowd at least a little bit. You both set your satchels down on the corners of your seats, Arthur’s finger tapping against the finished wood that made up the table before he took out a cigarette from his satchel along with his lighter, flicking the flame before holding it against his cigarette to light it, Adjusting to stuff the lighter conveniently into the pocket of his pants, inhaling the tobacco into his lungs before blowing the smoke away from the booth.

“I’ll get up, get us some drinks.” 

“Mhm.” You’d hum as you watched him shift out of the booth, walking away to go to the bar. You’d notice something in his empty space, a piece of paper had fallen out of his satchel. You didn’t think anything of it of course, didn’t bother reaching over to put it back in for him. Curiosity killed the cat.

A few minutes later Arthur came back with a couple bottles, sitting back down into the leather seats of the booth with a sigh, the bottles clinking against the table as he placed them down.

“Thanks.” You'd nod, popping the cork out the bottle with your thumb.

“Just two beers, don’t wanna get too drunk, not here.”

Boy, was he wrong. 

After those two beers Arthur had gotten up again to get another. Once beers were out he went to whiskey. One whiskey was out he grabbed any alcohol they had at that bar. Two turned into four. Four turned into six, –eight… Ten.. Fuck.

To be fair you didn’t have as many drinks as Arthur deciding to play responsible tonight, but it was still enough.

The once clean table turned into a mess of empty bottles, glasses, Arthur’s cigarettes and the ashes from made a mess of the ashtray pushed to the side of the table. Random splashes of golden liquid dripped on the table. Now piss drunk in a booth with an also piss drunk Morgan was… Actually a real fuckin’ good time. A peep could escape your lips and Arthur could double over the table with laughter, same with you. 

One idiotic conversation after another you finally thought of it again even through your drunken haze –whatever that artist ‘gave him’ to persuade him into going to the gallery. Why was it clawing at you so much? You usually weren’t so interested in him or his life. Maybe it was because you knew he was blatantly lying to you. 

 “Now– you tell me the hell that– that artist gave you– remember?” 

Finishing the sentence with a hiccup you’d look back at Arthur. Now since you both were a couple more shots away from passing out onto the sea of glasses that made up the table, both of your tongues were loose, of course.

The picture he slid over to you from the other side of the table was a photograph of a nude woman of course, her bare breasts on a perfect display as she perched on a chair. You couldn’t help but laugh, was he really carrying this around all this time? Sure– that creep of a man could truly draw, but Arthur wasn’t one to keep aimless gifts close to him, definitely not directly in his satchel for safe keepings –though you couldn’t imagine what he was actually doing with this picture. If it’s what you thought that would be pretty damn pathetic. 

He let out a laugh, shaking his head as he reached into his satchel. “Goddamn, guess you know how to loosen a man up–”  He pulled out that piece of paper that was earlier peeking out from the top of the leather. “--Gave me this pretty little drawin’. Ain’t she a fuckin’ ‘beaut, eh?”

“He surely can draw– that man–” You’d slur, sliding the illustration back to Arthur, wasn’t something you really needed to study.  “--Now, you don’t–” You’d clear your throat “Surely you don’t–” “Now princess, I’d need a lot more than a sketch for that.”

The music, the chatter, the yelling and hollering in the saloon was echoing through your head. You were sure the pianist practically banging on the keys of the piano would split your ears open if you stayed in that place any longer –you’d ignore it for now, hell maybe even another drink would solve that problem.

You’d laugh, his words melted right off his tongue from the alcohol. Right now you couldn’t even force yourself to think anything of the words he was saying, and anyway, the thought of a man –even Arthur jerking off to a measly sketch of a woman sounded more unappealing than something that’d get you going. Why would it anyway? Arthur was– well, he was Arthur. You’d often be cautious to even call him a friend of yours. Though right about now in the haze of booze that clouded your brain and same his, he’d most definitely call you his friend as an introduction at least.

“...I didn’t need to know that information.” You’d finally get past your lips with another giggle, slouching over the table with that damned empty bottle still in your grasp, being swung around to enunciate all your sentences. 

Arthur raised an eyebrow, he couldn’t help the grin that pulled at his lips –blame the brandy for that. He leaned back into the leather seats of the booth, his arm lazily draped onto the table, tapping his finger against the glass bottle he held –completely empty. 

“You asked.” 

He shrugged, taking a long sip from the glass bottle, savoring the feeling of the cool liquid slipping down his throat, feeling unnecessarily in love with the burning. You’d pout, tap your finger against the bottle you held, but the corners of your lips betrayed you, a smirk quickly replaced how your bottom lip would stick out from your top.

 “Didn't expect an answer– not like that–” hic “–not from you.”

“What are you– drawin’ these types of things too? Psh– maybe you needed the reference.” You’d mock him, that brought a scoff from his lips as if you just said something so fucking absurd, he shook his head, slamming his bottle back down onto the wooden table as you swirled your empty bottle around the table. His gaze was seemingly stuck on the table as if he was examining the grooves and knots in the wood, running his finger along the imperfections.

“No, I–” His voice was conveniently cut off by a bang coming from one of the tables, more loud hollering, yelling –looks like someone won a poker game at least, the table surrounded by wasted men, all a bit too excited to be here tonight. Arthur was clearly getting antsy and the alcohol was even clouding your vision. 

Imagine a radio overlapping ten different songs over each other and now replace the songs with the not-so pleasant sounds of men who’d been guzzling booze all night screaming over losing their money by their own stupid and idiotic decisions, women cackling over the city’s pointless gossip– that damn piano! You were ready to smash your beer bottle over the pianist’s head–

 You tried to take a swig from your empty bottle before tossing it onto the table with the others. With a groan Arthur buried his face into his worked palms, he seemed just as sick of it as well.

“Goddamn–” He’d groan. His hands pressing harder into his face as if he was desperately trying to wipe away the noise. “Fuck. Fuck…” 

You two just couldn’t stand it anymore. 

__________

So, why stand it?

You and Morgan made it out of the bar successfully without beating someone with one of the bottles from the mess you had carelessly left on the table –you two getting out of there in time for the bartender to say anything. Swinging your satchels over your shoulders you two left the godforsaken noisebox that saloon had turned on, now all the ‘’hootin’ ‘N’ hollerin’,, was a faint sound heard from the distance as you walked down the sidewalk.

You rubbed your temple with the pad of your thumb, feeling a little better now without all the over fucking excitement.

“Gah– fuck.” Arthur would lean up against the brick building beside him, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand before looking forward, noticing the lit sign for the hotel in the distance. It was quite obvious you two wouldn’t want to be riding your horse back to camp right now. Morgan checked his pocket watch, the arms of the clock pointing to 11:35. ‘Kay, not too late.

“You don’t wanna ride all the way to camp right now, do ya?” His voice deeper than normal from all the drinking, the slurring.

“Not particularly,” 

With a pause your head turned to the sign of the hotel, it’d be better just to go right straight there, once again you might’ve gone it anyway tonight just for that comfortable bed that comes with the deal  –Hell, two dollars could get you a bed with two rooms if you’re lucky enough. 

A hum escaped your throat as you nodded. “I–”

“Dont– don’t worry I’ll be payin’” 

As if you didn’t have two dollars to spare you perked up a bit at that. Guess it was all you needed to hear.

No more excuses, you’d be spending the night with this drunken fool. 

You two both were wobbly on your feet, of course with the amount of shots and bottles practically swallowed whole you could go figure that. You walked into the front doors as you tried to adjust your clothes, Arthur pushed his hat up so it wouldn’t be slouched over his eyes.

“Ah, may I help you two?” The clerk at the front desk had one of those fake overexaggerated smiles on his face.

“Just lookin’ for a room to stay the night. Nothin’ special.” He’d clear his throat, trying to shake off the drunken slur that was making his voice. “Two beds.”

Of course he had to clarify that– er, it only made sense anyway. It’d be really awkward if you and Arthur had to share a–

“Sorry, we don’t have rooms with two beds here.”

Shit.

Well it was logical at least, why would they? Let’s think. Who actually gets hotel rooms – commonly it’s men who’ve bought themselves a whore for the night or someone looking for a place to rest on their ventures. Not often you have two drunken outlaws stumbling in asking for two beds.

“Fine. M’That’s just– fine.” 

Arthur would pass some money over the desk to the man behind, in exchange he received a key to the room.  

“Upstairs, first room to your left, enjoy the stay folks.”

Jesus, you could’ve sworn that smile was melting off that clerk’s face as he spoke. You’d rub your temple again as you and Arthur just said a quick ‘’thank you,, in unison. 

Both of your boots would stomp heavily up the stairs. – upstairs first room to your left. Once there you turned to it, Arthur put the key in, turned it, opened the door. The rusted hinges creaked as it opened, though despite that sound the door opened to reveal a very nice looking hotel room. The bed was made, a thick quilt and were those– satin pillows? 

Surely this was paradise.

Arthur’s eyes looked around the room, other than the bed, a dresser in front, couple nightstands and an oil lamp to give the room a nice warm light –there was an arm chair pushed to the side of the room. 

“I’ll take the chair.”

He groaned as he shimmied his coat off of his shoulders, lazily throwing it onto the arm of the chair. Now with this action he also removed his satchel, it hit the nightstand by the bed, narrowly missing the lamp and hitting the edge before his palms met with his forehead again.

“M’gonna try to find a bathroom in this place–”

You’d let a scowl cross your mouth as he said that, watching as he stumbled out the door, closing it behind him.

Well, at least you could get some peace and quiet– is what you would say if there wasn’t the sound of the bed creaking clearly from rocking back and forth and a quick pace wasn’t coming from behind the drywall of your own room. Whatever, somehow that could be easily ignored by you.

You did notice something more interesting than that though –something you couldn’t seemed to ignore: Arthur’s satchel had fallen from where he had thrown it, landing onto the floor as all his things fell all of it –a mess of papers and money, a couple packs of cigarettes too. You’d click your tongue as you went to pick it up, noticing his journal had fallen out too.

You crouched down to start putting his things back into the leather bag, the money, the cigarettes, though your hands lingered on the worn leather back of his journal for a bit longer than they should’ve.

No, you shouldn’t.

But what if you just– one peak wouldn’t hurt. 

Arthur would probably take a while anyway figuring he went to presumably empty his body of all the alcohol he had drank in just one evening.

 Though as you looked more at the mess on the ground below your knees you’d notice the papers more, one was right side up but underneath the journal, so you’d lift it. Doing so revealed the full drawing done in pencil–

A sketch of a nude woman much like one Châtenay had drawn. But this one– it seemed different. There was more detail, more fluidity to the art, it looked all the more real. Down to the freckles drawn down the valley of her breasts.

You flipped over another stray paper, this one of the same. A naked woman, her breasts on full display, detailed. You’d flip another

And then another.

You’d open his journal.

Flipping through the pages where he’s drawn various things, trees, animals, beautiful scenery of places he’s traveled with the locations written in the corners, some pages filled with chicken scratch of his thoughts– you’d pay no mind to those. You started to notice the pages that were ripped out from his journal yet kept in, more drawings. 

Were you going crazy or did these drawings turn from your average woman with long wavy locks and bright eyes to– you…?

You felt a coil in your gut as you looked down at the images, not the bad kind of coil that you’d get while you’re being chased by an armed man or the kinda coil you’d get as a kid when your parents caught you stealing from the cookie jar– no, you could tell it wasn’t that kind from the additional heat that pooled in your tummy.

Your breathing would pick up, your eyebrows knitted closely as you looked down at these drawings. Your eyes. Your lips. Your nose. Quite obviously your hair too–

Fuck. You were beginning to hear footsteps stumbling down the hallway. You’d quickly shove the contents of his satchel back in, you surely didn't have time to worry about where everything went– if it’d just fall out again, if he’d notice it had been ran and rummaged through. Once it was all in there you quickly latched the button and placed it back on the nightstand, quickly standing from your knees as soon as he opened the door.

“Hi–” 

How could a two letter greeting sound guilty as ever?

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as a grunt escaped the back of his throat, though now looking at him maybe you didn’t wish you were as drunk as him right now –even if it probably meant you’d be forgetting about those drawings by now, maybe you’d just brush it off. 

He closed the door behind him as he coughed into his fist, gently guiding you out of the way so he could get to the satchel on the nightstand– 

Fuck.

As he undid the button he reached in to grab a packet of cigarettes when he noticed one of them was missing. 

“You take one of these?”

He’d say, popping the last one of the packet actually still in his satchel between his lips before lighting it.

“What– no! No– I don’t smoke…”

He’d look at you with his half-lidded gaze he’s had since the saloon, furrowing his brows at your reaction, frazzled for no good reason.

“Christ, girl. You don’t take your liquor well.”

That was funny, you’d think it was the other way around.

“I think it’s quite the opposite, Arthur.”

You’d see his gaze shift to the floor as he looked around, where could’ve that pack gone? He was sure he had a second one– no, he knew he had a second one since he just went out and bought it earlier in the day and– Ah, there it was. Halfway to being pushed completely under the bed Arthur bent to pick it back up. He was too delirious to think of why it even got there.

You swallowed the lump in your throat as you looked at him, his body– those fingers that you now knew were once holding a pencil to paper, sketching you, what he imagined to be underneath those pretty blouses you wore, those skirts that stopped at your ankles. 

This was killing you. Even though you hadn’t said a word to him you still felt like you were lying to him, deceiving him. You never had a problem with that before anyway, why start now? 

You knew what else you always were –that damn loud, snarky girl he always hated to be around. The one who’d let any words leave her mouth without a thought and now you’re here, standing in silence, you’d think your mouth was sewn shut. 

Under the shadow of the bed Arthur saw something else– a paper.

Shit. 

He tapped his boot on top of it and dragged it out, the sound of the paper sliding across the wooden floor heightened your senses again. Course it was one of those drawings, those drawings. It was his turn for his heart to rapidly thump against his ribs.

“Fuck.” You’d hear him groan as he bent down to pick up that paper now, looking it over, it wasn’t one of the drawings of you, one of the quick sketches of a woman he hadn’t named.

“You didn’t–”

…

“I did.”

The room fell silently quickly after that, how could it not? There was no point of you mustering up a flustered, messy defense in a long drawn out blabber that’d escape your lips so you’d just admit it. It wasn’t nothing you did wrong anyway. Arthur sighed, rubbing his hand over his face once more as he shoved the drawing back into his satchel, easily frustrated now he’d just crump it up into a ball before getting it into the leather bag. He braced his hands on the edge of the night stand, taking in a deep long breath before letting out an even deeper and even longer breath out. 

You should say something– say something so he could look you in the eye.

“I– didn’t ask for those.”

“I know.” He’d breathe.

“I didn’t even realize you considered us friendly– I had no clue you–”

“I know.”

Your fingers would twitch at your sides, swallowing hard.

“You don’t know what you’re doing to me…”

At first in his head those words sounded– like they could be angry, it might’ve been his brain telling him that. Then he heard that tone– that almost breathless tone in your voice. He finally got the courage back to look you in the eyes, his fingers peeling away from the edge of that nightstand, if his nails dug into the finished wood any harder he would’ve left indents.

“You should be angry with me.”

“I’m not. I mean– I couldn’t be farther from that.” 

You’d stop a moment, his breathing was heavy and so was yours. Arthur would push and twist his cigarette into the ashtray to put it out, blowing out the rest of the smoke through his nostrils with a suppressed, small cough.

“What are you then, princess?’

The name he had been calling you all day now sounding completely different in this heavy tone. You knew exactly what you were. Voicing that would be a little difficult. You felt if you did end up blurting something out it’d either kill the moment or kill him. His voice still had a slur to it from the alcohol, his tongue felt heavy in his mouth. Your own throat ran dry as you flicked your eyes to his plump, pink lips.

A man like Morgan knew what that look you gave meant, he’s had his own fair share of whores over the years, working girls were his usual go-to after Mary at least, before too. I mean, Christ, the man had himself a son once he knew what your eyes alone were saying.

“Why don’t you find out…” You’d finally blurt.

His boots clicked against the ground as he walked close to you, his hand reaching out to cup the nape of your neck.

The way his face slowly, so carefully slowly moved towards yours you’d think he was going in for a slow, gentle capture of your lips– not quite.

His face twitched– leaving you with a brief flash of micro emotion before he would collide his lips against your own, his fingers curling and tangling in your locks of hair.

___________

His tongue delved into your mouth before your own body got the chance to respond, your arms quickly wrapping around his neck as you moaned into the kiss. His hands slid down your shoulders, arms, the curve of your waist, hips, all the way down to your thighs, hands moving to the back of them to hoist you up against his body, his palms laid flat against your ass.

Your legs locked around his hips, finding difficulty to find a place to settle your hands as his tongue fucked your mouth, his shoulders? His arms? You’d eventually give them a home on his vest-covered chest, your fingernails digging into the black leather. 

He could feel the denim of his pants stretch around his growing cock, he hoisted you higher, your clothed breasts practically at his lips now, those lips quickly parted from your lips to move down your neck, sucking at your pulse point.

You would never consider yourself noisy, not ever. Your life so far had never called for sex, sure men had given you their eyes, licking their lips seemingly to grab your attention but they never did, failing miserably instead of getting what they wanted from you. Playing with yourself was a lost cause but you’d count it as experience, the frustrated pumps of your own fingers into your pussy weren’t enough to draw pleasure, relieve the ache in your stomach, it only made it tighter.

Arthur had sucked a hickey into your skin, he made sure it’d be hidden by your hair since it was so far up on your neck. His roughened hands still would squeeze your ass cheeks, fingers working you like dough before giving it a quick, hard spank. Almost just muscle memory for him.

With a grunt he’d lower you two down onto the bed, his mouth quickly returned to yours with the same –nearly violent pace. The bulk of his muscles pressing into your more so petite form. His hand roamed your body – your legs, thighs, stomach, moving up to cup then squeeze your soft breast, the pad of his thumb teasing your budded nipple through the thin fabric of your blouse rewarding him with a moan from your sweet lips.

Just the feeling of his clothing rubbing against his body was driving him mad, ‘’uncomfortable,, couldn’t even express it anymore, it was hell. His hands reluctantly pulled away from you, at a quick pace his thick fingers undid the buttons of his heavy vest, when that was gone, quickly discarded to the floor he finally felt like he was gaining - at least some - of his breath back, now it was a matter of his shirt, quickly undoing the buttons of that next. Fuck, he needed you.

He needed you right fucking now. 

He shimmied the shirt off of his shoulders, down the muscles of his arms before it dropped to the floor behind him –he was on top of you again. His hips bucked into yours quick and hard. Grinding. Rubbing.

Your hair would splay behind you on the bed, always thought in moments like this your eyes should be closed, that seemed like common knowledge, your half-lidded eyes still refused to fully close, especially now that his shirt was off. You’ve of course seen Morgan with his shirt off before, tending to his wounds, his cuts, bathing in the lake out by camp– close up like this it was different. His biceps pulsing as his hands braced on either side of your head, fingers curling into the blanket. Puffs of hard breaths would escape him, it was almost like a pattern before he’d grab you by the sides of your thighs tight.

Arthur would let himself fall back against the pillows that piled against the bed frame, dragging your body right onto his lap –now it was obvious how hard he was, that mass between his legs pulsating against your ass, your back pressed against his chest as he snaked an arm around you, quickly so fucking fast. He’d begin unbuttoning your blouse, tugging it right off of you, you were surprised he didn’t tear the fabric off of your pretty little body. His hands moved up, groping and squeezing your tits from behind, one of his hands moved down your body, down your sternum, stomach, and past the hem of your skirt, dripping your hand under it before his thick fingers found your panties.

Fucking hell you were soaked.

“Jesus christ… Fuckin’ hell you’re soaked…”

He’d grunt, he hadn’t spoken in a while, so focused on his movements, breathing. This was something he couldn’t ignore. He placed a kiss on your nape before his fingers would slide past your wet underwear, his hips involuntarily thrusting into your ass, squeezing your tit harder as he pushed two of his big fingers into your hot cunt. Your head lolled back against his shoulder as you practically squealed. 

“Arthur–!”

Your mouth was wide open, sharp, sinful moans escaping from you as his fingers curled inside you, fuck. If you couldn’t even handle his fingers how would you handle his cock. You can only imagine how fucking big it was. Big hands, muscles, body, it’d be one of god’s greatest jokes if it didn’t live up to the rest of his body.

Your cunt would clench around his fingers- it had been this whole time. His fingernail scraped across the tip of your erect nipple again, you’d squirm in his arms, your own fingers digging into his massive biceps, the tip of your finger tracing the vein that ran down it, his muscle would twitch.

With a wet squelch from your tight pussy Arthur would withdraw his fingers from your walls, you weren’t finished. Wasn’t his concern. The coil in your gut felt like it’d burst any second, your cunt left throbbing, empty without the fill of his fingers.

He was gonna give you something better than his fingers.

“Lift up…”

His mouth was pressed against your ear feeling the hot breath fan onto your lobe. His hands gripped onto your hips, pulling that pretty dark skirt right down the length of your legs, you could hear the clinking of his belt behind you, making your ears perk. 

Another command escaped his lips, you’d nod as you shakily got off of him, kneeled onto the bed. Arthur blew out the oil lamp on the bedside table, the room now lit by the paleness of the moonlight that shone through the windows, the curtains spread. It wasn’t like people would see anyway, though it’d be a good show.

“Up.”

Once he had unbuckled his belt he threw it to the ground– Arthur didn’t wear briefs, why would he? They caused him more discomfort, an extra layer of tightness to his balls and shaft. One tug of his work-pants and his hard, thick cock sprung from the confines of the black denim, the light from the window reflecting on the bead of precum that beaded off his cockhole. His size was impressive, sending a signal through your body– you couldn’t control yourself anymore. You ripped your underwear right off of that poor bundle of nerves that it protected, tossing the wet lace down onto the floor.

You practically crawled to him, his hands reached for your hips before pulling you on top of him, walking on your knees over him, his cock shooting straight up as it twitched with your pussy like it was fucking magnetic. You’d sink your body down onto the thickness, moaning his name as you sheathed him into your pulsating cunt. His hand wrapped around the headboard, gripping it for dear life as he pumped his way into you–

“Fuck!” Your hands braced on either one of his hips before one trailed up to his chest.

“That’s it– that’s fuckin’ it, princess.”

His thrusts quickened, his back arching up with each fast pound of his pelvis. His cock slipping deeper into your gummy walls with each snap. His dick curved inside of you, the head of his shaft kissing your g-spot, he felt so painfully good, your teeth bit into your thumb to try to muffle the sounds escaping your mouth, your body shaking. 

You didn’t want to let yourself be this –a mess on top of him. Riding him. You had to gain some control even with his cock slapping inside of your sore hole. His eyes opening up, releasing the headboard to trail back to your breasts, those scarred, calloused hands - once again - giving the tender mounds another generous groping. Your hands would run to rest on top of his own big ones, the size of him consuming every sense –not only his dick, his hands, his body. Looking down and seeing the muscles in his stomach tense and twitch, his head arching backwards into the comfortable pillows behind. He was close. Surely you were too.

His hand ran to the small of your back as he helped you a bit, pushing himself up against the headboard so his body was lazily sat up now, your hips rolling back and forth into his as you ground down, making a loud, throaty moan release from the back of his throat, his balls slapped against your ass, now you’ve got it. Bouncing up and down on his cock leaving him with no mercy.

“You’re gonna make me cum, princess– you’re’mmmm–”

His eyes locked onto the sight of your perfect tits bouncing up and down as you took his cock, he felt his sack tighten up, that unbearable sensation deep in his gut, he was gonna cum. He needed to cum. Though you were still chasing that high as his fingers dug into your waist, your skin there raw and pink from the tight hold. The base of his cock rubbed against your clit, the coarse hair crowning it scratched against the sensitive, swollen bud, the sensation making you lose every bit of yourself to him.

With one more curved thrust from him you’d climax, your body collapsing over top of his as you did. Making sure to cry right into his ear. Your trembling fingers clawing and digging into the broad, tense muscles of his shoulders. His eyes rolling back into his skull as his orgasm followed yours, strings of hot semen coating your inner walls as he fucked it into you, making your pussy milk out every hot, thick rope of cum, his head falling foreward between the valley of those pretty tits he’d been admiring all night. 

“Oh fuck, princess.” 

His voice wavered as he tried desperately to catch his breath back though it seemed it’d all been stolen from his lungs.

“Oh, Arthur…”

That desperate whine squeaked from your lips. A kiss was planted on your clavicle before he’d guide you so you were underneath him again, careful not to jar you too much after all he was well aware of how hard he had just fucked that tight little hole of yours. He’d pull his shaft out from those walls that were spasmed around him just a second ago, watching all that access, hot seed spill out from your pink petals. 

Did you think that was it? Surely you had to return the favor.

Arthur had a cigarette lit and hanging from his lips that were wet with his own salvia, your head between his legs bobbing up and down on that thick cock that was still coated with your own juice. His fingers tangled up in your hair, fucking your mouth with the same force as he had with your cunt just moments ago. The cigarette in his hot mouth was the only thing suppressing his noises, taking it between his fingertips just to let out a loud long moan. 

You’d gag when his swollen tip hit the back of your throat unexpectedly, your hands digging into his thighs as your eyes held close so fucking tight tears welled up in them, making your vision blurry as you looked up at Arthur, eyes closed, puffing on that cigarette. Your left hand went to wrap around your base as you pulled him nearly completely out of your mouth, your lips still wrapped around his cockhead, your tongue tracing his hole.

“Goooooood fuckin’ girl… Keep going–” 

Your hand jerked him off now as your abused throat got to catch a break, though it’d still need to be put up to work, hm? You hopped onto his thigh as your hand now caressed his chest, trickling your fingers down his thick chest hair that covered the tan skin. Your thumb teased his red hot tip, before you kept rolling your hand up and down –he was close, you now leaned to tell when that vein that ran down his low stomach all the way down to the middle of his shaft began to twitch and pump you’d get to milk the man dry a second time. A mix of your drool and his precum dripping down his length.

Your fist tightened around him as your mouth locked with his as he held the smoking cigarette between his forefinger and his middle, his hand wrapping in your hand to the nape of your neck, hips bucking into your palm, he cums again. Hard. Right into your fist. 

Arthur was panting like a damn dog, you had jerked him off just right to get his legs to tremble as they spread for you. He broke away from your mouth to catch his breath that you stole from him. You trailed a kiss to his neck, he had been marking you all night you thought it was only fair to give him some too, sucking a purple mark into his skin before trailing your mouth down.

“Good girl— good fuckin’ girl…” He was a mess.

His praise was always a godsend to you, ringing through your ears, you craved it. Your tongue ran down his collar, his shoulder, then down his arm, those pulsing muscles that were smooth to the touch, glistening with his sweat. The way his chest began heaving heavily as you traced the thick vein that ran down his bicep with your tongue.

Receiving was something that his body needed. But giving was something that he craved. Just hearing the sweet moans and cries from a woman’s mouth as it hung agape was something that could get him off more times at just the thought of than a blowy. 

–Though now your legs were on his shoulders as he pumped his tongue into your walls, running it up and down your slit as he - messily - ate your pussy, he was starving for it after all. Your back was arching upwards but his hands were too occupied holding your ankles to the dips of his shoulders to touch you anywhere else, his nose pressed against your clit –even his nose could find work. Your pants were hot and labored, all you can let out those sharp, gorgeous whines of his name, the one you’ve grown so accustomed to.

“Arthur!”

Again.

“Fuck- fuck, Arthur–!”

His name learned to roll off your tongue like honey, it seemed to be becoming the thing that came natural to you in life. He loved it, his mouth sucking feverishly at your clit, he knew all  those sweet-spots, you weren’t a religious girl, - if you were you wouldn’t be in your right mind to let Arthur do these truly sinful things to you - but you’d thank god to every whore, every woman that taught him these tricks. 

Your thighs would squeeze his head til’ it was about ready to pop, though that’s just what Arthur wanted, mumbling praise into your sweet, slick folds as his fingers moved into the mix too, forcing your body to that high you’d been desperately chasing, the pad of his finger pressing against one of your soft spots.

You’d cum hard on his face, your glistening climax now coated his beard as he removed his face from your thighs, looking at your heaving, shaking body now beneath him. Resting your legs down he’d slowly lower himself back onto you, his lips kissing from your navel to your lips, his body - and yours, of course - finally feeling a bit heavy.

“You’re too good f’me, girl…”

At the moment there was not enough oxygen in your lungs to give him a vocal response, you’d just nod, your cheeks flushed a pale pink. His hand moved to brush some hair away from your face, strands stuck to your cheeks, forehead, it was a sight for him. He’d pick you up, pulling you to sit in his lap as he held you to a tight embrace, nipping and kissing at your neck. He was so needy for you. 

______

The night had settled, only a bit. You found yourself tucked in Arthur’s arm with the warm quilt thrown on the hotel bed covering your bodies, both sore and spent.

Arthur had been flipping through the pages of his journal now, it only felt right to shamelessly show you the works he’s done of you now, of course those were only a couple.

“I stopped doin’ them for a while now… Most of them was from when I was drunk. Foolish.”

He’d explain, though it didn’t seem like it needed an explanation anymore, you didn’t care after all though you appreciated it. Your hand would reach out to touch the page, feeling the rough paper beneath your fingertips.

“I don’t mind…”

“Yeah well, maybe now you can model f’me, hm?… I’m always better working with a reference.”

You couldn’t help but giggle.

“It's a date then.”

You two had both fallen asleep shortly after, his sweet praises in your ear til your body was limp against his own, his fingers combing through your hair —a moment of intimacy and peace like this after he had fucked you so thorough. Not a thought of worry in your pretty little head.

 'Cept maybe how the ride back was gonna feel on that soreness between your legs– 

[vittoriaisfuckingpathetic]

all of the above

[sallowsarchives]

Beneath the Battles (Final)

Part I | Part II | Part III

Pairing: Arthur Morgan x Fem!Reader Summary: You and Arthur finally face your true feelings and past grievances, breaking down the barriers that have kept you apart. Word Count: 8.8k  Warnings/Tags: EXPLICIT (18+ ONLY) MINORS DNI. No use of y/n, explicit language, angst with fluff, size difference (Arthur is a big guy), oral (female receiving), fingering, orgasm denial, dirty talk, unprotected p in v, Arthur pulls out, a little roughness, aftercare, SMUT with plot A/N: AHHH, here’s the final part!! I’d like to formally apologize for taking so long to update, I actually ended up scrapping and rewriting it, which took longer than expected. I hope this makes up for it. Once again, thank you to those who read this story and for all your lovely comments!

Read on AO3

The mansion loomed in the distance, its imposing structure partially obscured by the dense trees and underbrush that surrounded it, its windows glimmering faintly under the moonlight, casting a soft glow on the well-kept grounds. 

The night was unnervingly quiet, the kind of stillness that breeds caution. After days of scouting, the mansion was finally dark and silent, just as expected. Its owners were away traveling, leaving only a few guards to patrol the surrounding grounds.

The plan was straightforward: sneak into the mansion, locate the concealed safe, and disappear with the loot before anyone was the wiser. It seemed like a simple enough task—at least, that’s what you told yourself.

You’re crouched behind the mansion's back door, fingers deftly working through the lock. With a final click, the lock gave way, and you quickly slipped inside, closing the door behind you with practiced ease. 

The air inside the mansion was heavy, filled with the scent of polished wood and aged stone. Once your eyes adjusted to the dim light filtering through the curtained windows, you moved swiftly through the shadowed corridors, your footsteps barely making a sound on the ornate rugs that lined the floors.

Just as you rounded the corner, you find yourself coming to a sudden halt.

A man stood before the very door leading to your prize. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and had an air of confidence that immediately put you on edge. He hadn’t noticed you yet, too busy trying to jimmy open the lock. 

You cursed under your breath. Who the hell was this guy? And why was he here?

This man was no bumbling thief; his movements were too precise, too deliberate. Whoever he was, he knew what he was doing, and that realization sent a wave of frustration through you. If he got to the safe first, all your planning, all your risk, would be for nothing.

You stayed hidden behind a wall as you considered your options. Confronting him could blow your cover, but waiting too long could mean losing the item. 

Deciding to take the upper hand, you crept closer, making sure to keep to the shadows with calculated movements to avoid detection.

Once you were close enough, you cleared your throat, the sound slicing through the stillness like a knife just as he managed to break the lock. 

The sudden noise startled him, and he froze, his head snapping toward the source of the disturbance. The look of surprise and irritation on his face was fleeting, quickly replaced by a calculating stare as he took in your presence.

You took a moment to assess him. A rugged, handsome face with piercing blue-green eyes that locked onto yours, their intensity making it clear that he was not easily intimidated. 

“Well, well,” you said, your voice laced with a mix of amusement and irritation. “Looks like we both had the same idea. Didn’t think I'd run into competition tonight. What’s your game, stranger?”

You kept your voice light but there was an edge to it. You had scouted this place for weeks, and you weren’t about to let some stranger steal it out from under you.

He chuckled softly, the sound rich and warm before replying with a low Southern drawl that sent a chill down your spine.

"I reckon I oughta be askin' you that too, miss. Ain't seen you around here when I was scoutin' the place, so I guess you're after the same prize."

“Perhaps. Too bad there’s only one prize in that safe,” you said, eyeing the opened safe behind him. 

He raised an eyebrow, a small, cocky smile playing on his lips. “Guess we’ll see who gets it first.”

You didn’t wait for him to make the first move. 

In a flash, you darted forward, aiming to dodge him and get to the safe. But he was quick—quicker than you expected. He sidestepped your advance, grabbing your arm as you tried to slip past him.

“Not so fast, darlin’,” he said, his grip firm but not painful.

You twisted out of his hold, a breathless laugh escaping you as you spun around to face him again, eyes flashing with determination. “You’re going to have to do better than that.” 

Without warning, both of you drew your weapons in a swift motion, yours a knife and his a pistol. You knew you were at a disadvantage, the cold steel of his gun giving him the upper hand. But you weren’t about to back down.

A game of cat and mouse ensued, each of you circling the other, quips exchanged with a tension neither acknowledged. 

You racked your thoughts for every trick you knew to try and outsmart him but in a moment of distraction, you seized your opportunity as a noise from outside drew both your attention. 

He briefly looked away and you grabbed the nearest object—a heavy, decorative vase—and hurled it in his direction, your sudden movement catching his attention once more.

“Goddammit!” he swore as the vase sailed through the air. 

The unexpected move caught him off guard, and he instinctively raised his arm to shield himself as the vase struck his arm, causing his pistol to slip from his grip and clatter onto the floor. The shattering noise echoed, no doubt alerting the guards outside.

You wasted no time and sprinted towards him, kicking the gun to the other side of the room. Ducking under his arm with practiced agility, you bolted toward the safe, your nimble fingers swiftly retrieving the necklace inside—a beautiful, intricate piece that promised a hefty pay.

The gleaming jewelry caught your eye, but you didn’t let your guard down. You knew he was still behind you, and the potential for danger was ever-present.

Turning around, you found him standing in place, watching you with an unreadable expression. You eyed him warily, adjusting your stance in case he made any sudden moves. 

To your surprise, he let out a low chuckle, shaking his head in a gesture that seemed almost admiring.

"I'll give you that one," he said with a chuckle. "But don’t go thinkin' I’ll let ya off that easy next time."

You met his gaze steadily, with the tone in his voice, you couldn't help a smirk of your own.

“Next time?” you replied, your tone carrying a hint of challenge. “You might want to reconsider how you pick your battles.”

He tilted his head slightly, raising a brow. “Maybe,” he said, his voice low and gravelly, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. “But where’s the fun in that?”

You smirk before taking a step back, keeping your eyes on him as you begin to make your exit. 

“Until we meet again, stranger,” you said, voice cool and confident.

His smirk remained, making no move to stop you or follow as you slipped toward the shadows. Once you were sure he wasn’t making any sudden moves, you turned and made your way out. 

The cool night air hits your face as you slip away into the darkness, the necklace secure in your pocket.

Weeks later, you stand before the Van Der Linde gang, newly recruited and eager to prove your worth. As Dutch wraps up your introduction with the gang members, a familiar face catches your eye amidst the crowd—leaning on a wagon, arms crossed, watching you with that same unreadable expression from the night at the mansion.

Arthur Morgan, you’ve come to know from Dutch as he introduced him as one of his most trusted men. You could see the recognition in Arthur’s eyes, and you couldn’t help the smirk that crept onto your face. 

“We’ve met,” you said casually, holding his gaze, making his lips twitch, but he remains silent.

And so it was, a few months into your time with the gang, Dutch pairs the two of you together for a job. From the start, things don’t go smoothly. Arthur’s stubbornness clashes with your determination, turning every decision into a heated argument.

"You're too damn cautious," you snap as you crouch behind a rock, waiting to ambush a carriage.

"And you're too damn reckless," he retorts, his voice low but heated.

The frustration between you simmering, neither willing to back down. 

Though the job was a success, it was clear that your relationship had shifted to something far more complex. 

A rivalry that would become full of sharp words, stolen glances, and the kind of tension that made your heart race whenever Arthur Morgan was near. 

The burning in your lungs is the first sensation that pierces through the fog. 

It feels like your chest is on fire, each breath a painful struggle as your body fights to expel the water that had been forced into your lungs. You cough weakly, the sound raw and strained.

The presence of another person over you is the next thing you sense. Their hand cradling your back as the other presses gently on your cheek, their voice a low, comforting murmur that reaches through the haze of pain.

“C’mon, easy now,” a deep voice rang out, soothing but urgent. “Breathe slow. Just breathe.”

As the pain in your chest begins to ease, you slowly become more aware of your surroundings. The rough ground beneath you feels gritty, the chill in the air seeps through your wet clothes, which cling uncomfortably to your damp skin. A persistent throbbing in your temple adds to the disorienting discomfort.

As your sight finally focuses, you see Arthur standing over you, his rugged features marked by concern and relief. His hair was wet and tousled, with a few strands clinging to his forehead, and his face was streaked with water and mud.

“You alright?” His voice is softer now, though it still carries a note of urgency. 

You try to speak, but your voice comes out as a faint, hoarse whisper. Attempting to sit up, you slump back into his arms, completely drained.

Arthur’s hand remains steady, his hand continuing to support you from your back.“Just take it easy, darlin’,” he insists. “We gotta get that nasty cut of yours fixed up.” 

After a moment, he speaks up again. "You scared the hell outta me, you know that?" he says, his tone softer than you expected. Confusion flickers in your eyes as you try to make sense of his reaction.

Arthur quickly brushes it off with a shrug and a quick, dismissive smile. "You good to stand? We need to find a place to camp."

Though slightly dazed, you nod and he begins helping you to your feet, his grip firm but gentle and begins to lead the way.

You take a chance to glance over at the river, your heart sinking. "There goes everything," you mutter, as you thought of all the loot from the stagecoach robbery now lost in those dark waters, swept away without a trace.

Arthur’s eyes follow your gaze. “Yeah, things went south real quick. Can’t say I’m surprised, though. Ain’t never gone smooth with us.”

A weary sigh escapes you. Arthur gives your shoulder a small squeeze, his voice softening. 

“We’ll figure out another way to make it up so we don’t come back empty-handed.”

As you and Arthur push through the thick underbrush, the sun has long set, leaving the sky almost entirely dark and providing scant light. The air is growing colder, and the fatigue from the ordeal is beginning to weigh heavily. 

After a while, Arthur spots a faint outline against the darkening sky. "There," he says, pointing toward the silhouette of a structure hidden among the trees.

You squint and make out the shape of an old, dilapidated cabin. Its roof is partially caved in, and the wooden walls weathered. Still, it seems like a decent refuge for the night.

Arthur leads the both of you towards it, his steps careful as he surveys the area for any signs of danger. He pushes open the creaky door with a grunt, revealing a dusty, cobweb-covered interior. The air inside is stale, but it’s dry and shielded from the elements.

"Looks like this’ll do for tonight," Arthur says, stepping inside and looking around. 

The main room contains a few pieces of furniture: a worn-out sofa, a small wooden table, and a couple of chairs. There’s a door on the left, which you assume leads to a bedroom. 

A stone fireplace stands against one wall, its hearth empty but still looking functional. To the right, you notice a small kitchen area with cabinets lining the wall, hinting at a space used for simple meals.

Arthur moves with practiced caution, his eyes scanning the room as he checks for any signs of danger. He pauses, pulling his pistol from its holster. It seems he managed to keep hold of his weapon and satchel during your fall into the water—an unexpected stroke of luck. 

Once he’s satisfied that the area is clear and no immediate threat is apparent, he nods and holsters the gun.

“Alright, let’s settle in,” he says, guiding you to a nearby chair. “I’ll get a fire going and check for any supplies. You just sit tight and rest.”

You nod, gratefully sinking into the chair. As Arthur moves around the house, you take a moment to let the exhaustion wash over you. 

You hadn’t noticed the several minutes that had passed by where Arthur managed to set up a fire with the dried wood he had found stacked by the fireplace, the flickering flames casting a warm glow over the room. 

He turns his attention back to you, a determined look on his face and retrieves a cloth from his satchel, pouring a generous amount of whiskey over it that he must have found when rummaging through the cabinets.

He takes a seat across from you, gaze steady and focused as he carefully examines the gash near your temple. 

“This might sting a bit,” he says softly, his voice carrying a reassuring calm. Gently, he dabs the cloth against the cut, the wound stinging from the contact.

Arthur’s movements are careful and deliberate, his brow furrowed in concentration. As he works, his eyes occasionally meet yours, a mix of concern and resolve evident in his expression. 

You watch him closely, the intensity in his expression a stark contrast to the usual deflective bravado he shows, a rare glimpse of the softer side of him that you don’t often see. 

After finishing with your wound, Arthur sets the cloth aside and glances at the both of you, noting the dampness of your clothes. 

“We’d best find us some dry clothes; ain't no good in keepin' us warm when we're soaked to the bone.”

You respond with a nod, feeling slightly uncomfortable from the wet garments clinging tightly to your skin. 

He stands up and motions you to follow, moving towards the door on the left you saw earlier. Inside, the room is dimly lit by the fading light seeping through the grime-streaked windows. Old, moth-eaten drapes hang limply from their rods, and the floorboards creak with each step.

There was a rickety, sagging bed with a threadbare quilt, and a lone wooden chest pushed against the wall. You follow behind him, noticing the layer of dust that covers everything, marking the years of abandonment. 

He heads to a chest, prying it open with a groan as the hinges protest, and begins rummaging through the contents.

As he searches for dry clothes, you start to remove some of your damp garments feeling the need to get more comfortable and ease the weight. 

You’re in the process of slipping off your soaked shirt when Arthur turns around, his eyes widening slightly at the sight of you in your soaked white chemise, and he quickly averts his gaze, his face flushing a deep red.

“Uh—here,” he stammers, his voice suddenly unsteady as he holds out a faded long brown skirt and a low-necked cotton blouse. “Found these. They should fit.” He glances away, clearly flustered.

Seizing the opportunity, you smirk and tease. “What’s the matter, Arthur? Never seen a woman in her underclothes before? I thought you were used to all sorts of rough and tumble.”

Arthur rolls his eyes, his face turning redder, and he clears his throat, clearly struggling to maintain his composure. “Even after gettin' yourself all banged up, you still can’t help but run that smart mouth of yours,” he retorts, trying to mask his embarrassment with a touch of irritation. 

You chuckle at his flustered response, enjoying the rare sight of him so off-balance before taking the clothes from him.

Arthur shifts uncomfortably, casting furtive glances as he takes a change of clothes for himself. He clears his throat again, his usual confidence momentarily eclipsed by awkwardness.

“I’ll, uh, just be outside if you need anything,” he mutters, leaving the room with a hasty step to give you your privacy. 

The door creaks as he pulls it shut, and you can hear him mumbling to himself as he closes it behind him. His grumbling is low and unintelligible, but it brings a faint, amused smile to your lips. You chuckle silently before turning your attention to the garments.

Moments later, you find Arthur standing by the window, now dressed in a fresh set of clothes—worn jeans and a plain gray button up. His silhouette is outlined against the darkness outside. The fire crackles softly in the hearth, its warmth beginning to chase away the chill.

Arthur turns to you, his expression more relaxed now that he's shed his previous discomfort. “Feeling a bit better?” 

You nod. “Yeah, much better. You?”

Arthur gives a small, awkward smile. “I’ll be just fine. Just need to take it easy and let the warmth do its work.” He gestures toward the fire. “Might as well make ourselves comfortable while we can.”

You nod and make your way to sit at the worn out sofa to warm up by the fireplace. After a comfortable silence you finally speak up, your voice soft with gratitude. 

“Thanks for everything, Arthur. I know it’s been a rough day, but I really appreciate you taking care of me.”

Arthur turns to you and nods, his usual gruffness softened by the warmth of the fire and the genuine moment between you. “Don’t mention it. Just doing what needs to be done.”

As the silence settles again, Arthur clears his throat and shifts slightly, his expression thoughtful. “Speaking of rough days… reckon I oughta say somethin’ about that night at the, uh, well, what happened at the Mayor’s party,” he begins, his tone a bit hesitant.

You fold your arms, feeling uncomfortable about bringing it up again, but you know you’ve both put off addressing the issue long enough. You nod, signaling for him to continue.

Arthur looks away for a moment, clearly struggling with how to frame his words. 

“I didn’t mean to make it seem like what happened between us didn’t matter. I guess I thought it’d be better to just… keep things simple and avoid complicatin’ things.”

Your eyes narrow and you let out a sigh. “You already said that but I still don’t know what you mean. If you don’t have anything new to add, then yes, I guess that’s all it was—just a fleeting moment to pass the time while we were stuck in that situation.”

“Godammit, it ain’t like that,” he says, his voice firm but tinged with a hint of vulnerability.

You glare at him, standing up as your  anger and frustration begin to boil over. “Then what, Arthur? I’m done with the guessing games. If you can’t be honest with me, then at least stop pretending you care.”

“Oh, is that so? What do you want me to say, huh? That I’ve been usin’ you? That I don’t give a damn? You think that’s gonna make things better?”

“I’m not askin’ you to lay it all out. I’m askin’ you to quit actin’ like none of this means a damn thing. You’re scared to face the truth, and it’s obvious. If you’ve got something to say, then say it.”

Arthur steps closer, his voice dropping to a low growl. “You don’t know a damn thing about what’s goin’ on with me.”

You meet his gaze, your anger unwavering despite the intensity of his look. “Then why don’t you stop hiding behind your excuses and show me what’s real for once? Or are you too scared to face it yourself?” 

His jaw tightens, eyes narrowing as the silence grows heavy between the two of you. You take a deep breath before continuing, forcing yourself to keep your voice steady. “Everything that happened at that party… it wasn’t just part of the act, was it?”

He looks away, eyes fixed on the ground as his expression hardens. “I was doin’ what we had to,” he says, his voice gruff. “We were pretendin’—had to make it look real.”

“That’s a goddamn lie and you know it,” you retorted. “Everything you did that night, kissing me like it meant something just to suddenly pull away and act like I was something you regretted. Do you have any idea how that felt, Arthur? How it made me feel?”

He flinched at your words, his hands balling into fists at his sides. “You don’t understand—”

“Then help me understand! You shut me out, you push me away, and I’m done pretending like it doesn’t hurt.”

Arthur looked at you then, really looked at you, and you saw the pain in his eyes, the conflict warring within him. 

Your words hang in the air, and for a moment, you thought he might continue ignoring you, that he’d keep his distance just as he always did. But when his eyes met yours again, there was something raw and unguarded in them that made your heart twist before he spoke, voice filled with a vulnerability you had never seen in him before. 

“That night at the party, when I told you it meant nothing and pushed you away—it wasn’t because I didn’t care, but because I did. I didn’t want you seein’ me as more than just part of this damned life I’ve led.”

“Have you not thought that I’m already a part of this life too? I’m not some innocent bystander in this, Arthur. I’m in it just as much as you are, fighting beside you, continuing to risk everything for the gang. Every time you push me away, it feels like you’re saying I don’t belong, that I’m not worthy of being part of this.”

Arthur’s face softened with regret. “I’m sorry if it came across that way. I’ve just been tryin’ to protect you in my own messed-up way. I don’t want you feelin’ like you’re not part of this, ‘cause you are. More than you know.”

You looked at him, searching for honesty in his eyes. “Then be honest with me, Arthur. Don’t shut me out. I need to know where we stand.”

“I ain’t good enough for you,” he confessed, the words coming out like a reluctant admission. “I’ve done things—bad things. And I know you’ve seen some of it, but you don’t know the half of it. You deserve better than some outlaw who’s spent his life takin’ more than he’s given.”

The silence that followed was thick with emotion, as you both tried to come to terms with the weight of his confession. The barriers between you seemed to dissolve, leaving only the truth of your feelings and the painful realities of the life you both led. 

You stared at him, the anger long dissipated from you as his words sank in. This was it—this was what had been driving him to keep you at arm’s length, to push you away whenever you got too close. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel the same way you did; it was that he didn’t think he was worthy of it.

“Arthur,” you said quietly, stepping closer until there was barely any space between you, “I don’t care about what you’ve done, or who you think you are. I care about you. The man who saved me today, who risked everything to make sure I was safe. The man who gives more to the gang than he ever takes for himself—that’s the man I see.”

He shook his head, his expression tortured. “You ain’t seen the worst of me yet.”

“And I don’t care if I do,” you shot back, your voice trembling with emotion. “You don’t get to decide how I feel about you, or what I’m willing to accept. I’ve made my choice, Arthur. I’m not turning back.”

He stared at you, his defenses crumbling as the truth of your words hit him. He’d spent so long believing he didn’t deserve anything good, that any softness or kindness was something he had to push away before it could be taken from him. Hell, that’s why it never worked out with Mary, too.

But here you were, standing in front of him, refusing to let him go, even after everything he’d done to keep you at a distance.

He leaned in closer, his free hand brushing a stray lock of hair from your face, his touch lingering as if he couldn’t bring himself to pull away. 

“I don’t know if I can be the man you deserve,” he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper.

You crack a small smile, your voice laced with a sarcastic edge but softened by the warmth in your eyes. 

“Come on, Arthur. Since when did you become an expert in what I deserve? I’ve been putting up with your brooding for far too long to be picky about the details.”

Arthur’s lips curled into a wry smile as he listened to your response. Despite the gravity of the moment, there was a glimmer of amusement and admiration in his eyes. 

“You know,” he said, his voice carrying a hint of his old charm, “you’ve been a right pain in my ass since day one. Guess that’s why it’s so damn complicated with us. But, damn it, you’re still the only one who can make me see the bright side of this mess.”

You raised an eyebrow, giving him a challenging look. 

“Oh, is that your way of saying I’m the best you’ve got? How flattering.”

Arthur chuckled, shaking his head. “Maybe more than you know. You’ve got a knack for makin’ everything seem less bleak, even when you’re makin’ my life hell.”

After a silent moment, Arthur reaches out, his thumb gently tracing the line of your jaw which sends shivers down your spine.

“I’ve been a damn fool,” he murmured, his voice low and rough, “for fightin’ this… for fightin’ you.”

Your heart ached at his words, at the honesty you had never expected from him. 

You had always seen him as a man of few words, someone who hid his true self behind a wall of sarcasm and indifference. But now, as he stood in front of you, you saw the truth in his eyes—the feelings he had tried so hard to deny.

Before you could respond, Arthur closed the distance between you, his lips finding yours in a kiss that was both fierce and tender. 

The kiss was a heady mix of passion and urgency, a kiss full of the unresolved tension and undeniable attraction that had been building between you. 

As the kiss deepens, you feel Arthur’s hand move to tangle in your hair, his fingers gently gripping the strands as he kisses you harder, his body pressing hard against yours.

You respond with equal fervor, your hands fisting in his shirt and pulling him closer before you both pull away for air, breaths labored with his chest rising and falling against yours.

Arthur nuzzles his face into the crook of your neck, inhaling your scent. He begins to trail soft kisses along your neck, his lips barely grazing your skin as his voice drops to a whisper, full of longing and relief.

“Been powerless against you since the moment you joined the gang. Reckon it all started that night at the mansion when we were both after the same prize.”

A low hum escapes him as your fingers thread through his hair, your touch sending shivers down his spine. He nuzzles further into your neck as he continues to mumble against your skin. 

“Wanted you so bad, and damn if that don’t scare the absolute life out of me.”

Arthur continues to kiss your neck, his lips moving down to your shoulder as his hands tighten their grip on your hips. The intensity of his touch grows as he pulls you even closer, the heat of his body pressing against yours, enveloping you in a wave of warmth and desire. 

You lean in closer, your lips grazing the shell of his ear as you whisper, your voice trembling with the same urgency that you hear in his. “Then stop holding back, Arthur. I want you.”

Your words seem to break whatever last bit of restraint he was clinging to. He lets out a low growl, and before you can even take another breath, his lips crash against yours once more, all fire and desperation. It’s a kiss that sears through you leaving no room for doubt.

Without breaking the kiss, he nudges you back until you feel the edge of the table pressing against the backs of your thighs. In one fluid motion, Arthur’s hands slip from your hips to your waist, lifting you just enough to set you down on the table's surface.

He steps closer, sliding between your legs as his hands grip your hips possessively. You felt his hips pressing insistently against your core, the contact electrifying and intense. 

He was achingly hard, a burning pressure that felt almost unbearable through the fabric of your clothes. The heat radiating from him was overwhelming, every shift of his body against yours sending waves of sensation coursing through you.

His hands, rough and calloused from years of hard living, left your waist and slipped under your shirt to savor the softness of your skin. His skilled fingers traced over your ribs before reaching your breasts. 

You've never been so glad to not be wearing your chemise underneath your clothes.

You inhaled sharply as he took one of your nipples between his fingers and pinched. "So responsive." Arthur murmurs against your mouth before pulling away and breaking the kiss. You chance a glance at his face, his eyes dark with hunger. 

With deliberate slowness, his hands begin their descent, gliding down to your calves, his fingers tracing the curve of your legs. 

He caresses your skin, almost reverently, before sliding up to the hem of your skirt. You shiver at the sensation as he pushes the fabric higher, gathering it around your waist, leaving you completely exposed to him.

Arthur’s eyes drink in the sight of you, his gaze heavy with desire. His hands, still lingering on the edge of your skirt, begin to trail slowly up your thighs, his touch careful and teasing. 

He pauses just as his fingers brush against the most sensitive part of your skin, his eyes flicking up to meet yours, dark and questioning. 

He’s waiting, holding back, as if needing your permission to go further. He doesn't move, his touch achingly close yet frustratingly distant.

"Arthur…" you plead, your voice edged with frustration.

He meets your gaze, lips twitch up in a slight smirk as his eyes gleamed with a mix of amusement and challenge. "You can do better than that, sweetheart," he murmurs, his voice low and teasing.

You scowl, making him smirk wider, the pressure making your frustration boil over. "Arthur, just—"

His fingers remain tantalizingly still, his eyes locked onto yours with a challenging gleam. The irritation fuels your desperation, and you let out a shaky breath, finally conceding.

"Arthur... please, I need you. I can’t stand it anymore," you say, your voice softened by surrender, the depth of your need evident.

Arthur’s lips curl into a satisfied grin as he hears your plea. He hums with approval and without another word, you watch as he leans down, his mouth finding your core with a fervent intensity, enveloping you in a warm, consuming embrace.

You gasped out as pleasure rippled through you, his name tumbling from your lips. Your fingers fly down to his hair, clenching at the strands and pull him closer as you surrender to the waves of sensation that crash over you.

He groans against you, his lips teasing the sensitive bud before his tongue moves with deliberate, savoring strokes, licking up your wetness. The taste of you lingers, smearing over his lips and dripping down his chin.

You feel his hand move between your thighs, his touch igniting another wave of pleasure as his thumb gently grazes your clit. The added sensation heightens your arousal, making your breath come in short, gasping bursts.

Without warning, he slips one of his fingers inside you, the sensation sending a jolt of intense pleasure through you. 

He moves with practiced ease, curling and thrusting as he builds a rhythm that makes you gasp and moan. Each movement is designed to amplify the pleasure he's already delivering, his touch skillfully coaxing you closer to the edge.

“Oh God—Arthur!”

His hands pick up the pace, moving faster and with more pressure, targeting that one sensitive spot inside you while his mouth continues to work on your delicate bud. You tighten around his fingers, feeling your legs start to tremble.

You were at the height of your pleasure, your climax so near it felt like you might explode at any moment. Arthur seems to sense it too, his movements expertly bringing you to the brink. 

But just as you're about to come, he abruptly pulls away, smirking down at you. You let out a frustrated whine, your body still trembling from the near climax. 

"Why—" you gasp, eyes pleading as you look up at him, your voice a mix of annoyance and need. The sudden halt only intensifies your frustration, making your desire for release even more unbearable.

Arthur leans in closer, his breath hot against your ear. "Don’t worry, darlin’, I ain’t finished yet," he murmurs, his voice a low, gritty whisper. "Wanna feel you wrapped around me when you come."

With a firm, decisive moment, his hands wrap beneath your bum, lifting you effortlessly. He carries you toward the worn couch, his strength palpable as he places you gently but firmly onto the cushions before positioning himself above you, his gaze never leaving yours.

Arthur’s hands move to unbutton his jeans with a practiced ease before shedding them, revealing his lengthy member, its impressive size immediately drawing your wide-eyed attention.

You can’t help but stare, your eyes widening with a mix of awe and anticipation as you take in the full extent of his arousal. The sight of him, so well-endowed and commanding, sends a thrill of excitement through you, and your breath catches in your throat. 

Arthur notices your reaction, a grin curling on his lips. He moves closer, his hands firmly cupping your face as he tilts your chin up to meet his gaze, capturing your lips in a deep, urgent kiss. 

While his mouth claims yours, his hands move with purpose, deftly working to remove your blouse. You respond eagerly, your hands sliding over his chest and working at the buttons of his shirt until it falls away. 

The two of you move with a synchrony of urgency and passion, shedding the rest of your clothes with a desperate need. Each article of clothing is discarded in a flurry of movement, leaving you both bare. 

Arthur pauses, his eyes dark and intense as they roam over your bare form with a feral hunger. A low growl escapes his throat, his eyes gleaming with a primal desire. 

“Shit,” he rasps, his voice rough and throaty. “Can’t believe I held myself back for so long.” His gaze lingers on you, filled with a raw, unrestrained hunger, as he savors the sight of you completely bare before him. 

He wraps your legs around his hips, drawing you closer as he positions himself between you. With one hand gripping himself and the other steadying your leg, he lines himself up, his breath coming in ragged bursts as he looks down at you.

“You ready for this?” 

You nod, your eyes locked onto his, filled with a mix of eagerness and anticipation. “Please, Arthur,” you reply, your voice trembling slightly. “I want you.”

Arthur’s lips curl into a fierce, satisfied smile before pressing himself against you and slowly begins to enter you, his gaze never leaving your face as a gasp escapes your lips, your body tensing with the intense sensation. 

You arch against him, your hands gripping his shoulders as you adjust to his size. The stretch and pressure of him inside you sends a wave of pleasure through you, your eyes fluttering closed momentarily as you moan out his name. 

He growls in response, his face contorted with both pleasure and concentration. “Goddamn you’re so tight.” 

His hands tighten on your hips, grip firm and possessive as waits for you to adjust around him. After a moment, you grip his shoulders tighter, your nails digging in as you try to steady yourself.

“Arthur,” you murmur, struggling to control your breath. “I need you to move.”

“You sure, sweetheart?” he asks, his voice dripping with raw desire. His eyes search yours for a sign of hesitation but find only eager need.

“Yes,” you breathe, your voice trembling with urgency. “Please.”

With a satisfied nod, Arthur begins to move, his thrusts slow and deliberate at first, each one bringing a wave of pleasure that makes your body tremble. 

As he finds a rhythm, his movements become more intense and fervent, his eyes never leaving your face. His breathing grows heavier, matching the pace of his thrusts as he drives deeper into you.

“Arthur, please…faster.”

He meets your gaze and with a firm grip, he pushes your leg further back against you, angling himself deeper. 

You gasp at the shift, your body arching and gripping him tighter as waves of pleasure crash over you. Each thrust sends a jolt of ecstasy through you, your breaths coming in quick, sharp bursts as you lose yourself in the mounting sensation.

His thrusts become more urgent, each movement sending a jolt of ecstasy through you. “That’s it,” he murmurs between breaths, “let me hear you, sweetheart.”

You moan in response, the sound escaping in a breathless gasp as his relentless pace overwhelms you, crying out his name as your voice trembles with pleasure. 

Arthur’s eyes darken with desire, and he groans deeply. He takes your face in his hand, his thumb tracing the outline of your lips. his gaze intently fixed on you, taking in every reaction, every flush of pleasure, driving him wild.

He can’t help but be captivated by the way you look at him, your gaze locking onto his with a mix of urgency and raw longing.

He’s not going to last long. Not when you look at him like that.

Arthur pushes your leg further back, nearly folding you in half as his thrusts become rougher and more intense, driving into you with a forceful rhythm. Each thrust relentlessly hits the spot inside you, sending waves of pleasure coursing through you. 

You feel yourself tighten around him, eliciting a deep groan from him. 

His hand slips between your bodies, his fingers finding the sensitive bundle of nerves at your core and begins to apply a firm, rhythmic pressure, his touch syncing with the hard, relentless pace of his thrusts.

“Arthur,” you moan, your voice a mixture of desperation and bliss.

Arthur grits his teeth, the effort to maintain control clear on his face. “Come on, sweetheart, let go for me… Wanna feel ya,” he growls, his voice thick with desire and urgency. 

The combined stimulation of his touch and his relentless thrusting pushes you toward the edge, your body quaking as the waves of pleasure crest and crash over you. His words, laced with raw need, tip you over that edge, breaking the last of your control. 

You let go completely, surrendering to the overwhelming pleasure as you tremble and gasp in his grasp, your body responding to his every command.

“That’s it,” Arthur growls, his voice rough with pleasure. “Good girl. Feels so good squeezing around me… there we go.”

He moves his hands to your hips, his own breathing ragged as he feels you tighten and convulse around him. He continues to drive into you through the waves of pleasure, his thrusts becoming even more urgent and relentless. You cry out, the sensation overwhelming.

Finally, with a groan of his own, he thrusts deep one last time before pulling out, taking his length into his hand. His body shudders, breath coming in rough, uneven gasps as he finds his release, spilling onto your stomach as the tension finally breaks.

He collapses onto you, his breath ragged and heavy, both of you trying to catch your breaths. After a while, you gently pat him, feeling the weight of him pressing down on you, and he lets out a breathy chuckle, his eyes half-lidded with contentment.

Arthur stands up and grabs the shirt he was wearing, using it to wipe the evidence of his release from your stomach and his. His touch is tender despite the intensity of the moment.

Once he’s finished, he lays back down beside you, pulling you into his arms. With a gentle but firm motion, he adjusts to create enough room for both of you on the worn couch. 

He wraps his arms around you, holding you close as you settle against him, the warmth of his body providing a soothing contrast to the earlier intensity.

“You alright there?” he asks, his voice soft and slightly teasing as he runs a hand soothingly along your arm.

You nod, your head resting against his shoulder, feeling a mix of exhaustion and satisfaction. “Yeah, I’m fine,” you reply, your voice a bit breathless. “Just needed a moment.”

Arthur chuckles softly, pressing a kiss to the top of your head. “Can’t say I’m sorry we didn’t do this sooner,” he murmurs, his tone filled with genuine warmth. 

You smile, your eyes closing as you let yourself relax into his embrace. “Me neither,” you whisper, feeling the comfort of his presence. “Guess it’s a good thing we finally did.”

A comfortable silence envelops you both, the warmth of the fire crackling softly in the background. As you settle into the quiet, the room is filled with a tranquil intimacy. 

The gentle heat from the fire and the flickering light cast a soft glow over your resting forms, guiding you both into a peaceful rest.

The next morning, the sunlight filtering through the cracks in the curtains gently warms your face, coaxing you awake from your slumber. 

You blink, slightly disoriented, and notice a quilt draped over you—a cozy, unexpected comfort that you don’t remember covering yourself with. 

You stretch out and sit up, searching for Arthur, but find that he’s no longer beside you. The space next to you is empty, leaving only the lingering warmth of his presence and the faint scent of him in the air.

You wrap the quilt around you before making your way to the bedroom, where you begin to get dressed in your now-dry clothes. 

As you finish getting dressed, you head outside, still wondering where Arthur could be. Opening the front door, you’re startled to find him now dressed in his own clothes and standing with both your horses.

He’s feeding his horse calmly, the sight of the horses safe and sound, along with Arthur’s relaxed demeanor, fills you with a mix of relief and surprise. 

He looks up, catching your gaze with a casual, knowing smile, clearly at ease despite the unexpected circumstances.

“Mornin’, sorry I didn’t want to wake ya,” he says, his voice warm and relaxed.

You blink, still processing the sight before you. “Wait, how did you find the horses? They ran off during that chase,” you ask, your voice filled with surprise and confusion.

Arthur grins, a touch of pride in his eyes. “Managed to track ’em down this mornin’. They’d wandered off a ways but were easy enough to follow. Took a bit of patience, but I got ’em back here safe and sound.” He pats one of the horses affectionately.

You let out a relieved laugh, shaking your head in amazement. “Well, I’m definitely grateful. I wasn’t sure how we’d get them back.

Arthur gives you a casual nod, his eyes still carrying a hint of satisfaction. “We should probably think about getting back to camp soon. Can’t say Dutch’ll be too happy about us comin’ back empty-handed.”

You frown slightly, your mind starting to turn over the implications. “Yeah, he might not be too pleased about that.”

Suddenly, something clicks in your mind, your expression brightening with realization. You make your way to your horse, patting her affectionately as you reach her.

You move to the saddlebag and start fishing around inside before pulling out a small pouch. Arthur watches you with curiosity as you open it, revealing the jewelry you had remembered stuffing inside. With a proud smile, you show it to Arthur, the glint of the gems catching the light.

Arthur raises an eyebrow, a smirk tugging at his lips. “Well… that’s a nice surprise. Turns out we’re not comin’ back empty-handed after all.” 

He glances at the jewelry, then back at you. “Good thinking.”

You tuck the pouch back into the saddlebag, feeling a surge of relief. “At least we’ve got something to make up for the trouble.”

Arthur shifts, his expression turning serious. “Listen, uh… everything I said last night—I meant it. I care about you, you know.”

You look at him, a soft smile forming on your lips. “I know.”

He pulls you close, and you share a tender kiss, the warmth and reassurance evident in the moment. When you pull away, you give him a playful nudge. “Now, let’s get back to camp.”

Arthur grins, nodding as he mounts his horse. “Lead the way.”

After a few hours of steady travel, you finally crest through the dense woods and emerge into the open area of Shady Belle. 

As you draw closer, you hear John’s voice call out from his post. “Who’s there?”

Arthur raises a hand in greeting, his tone slightly exasperated. “It’s just us two, you idiot.”

John approaches with a grin, clearly relieved to see familiar faces. “Well, well, look who’s back! Didn’t think you’d make it this time.”

His gaze shifts to you, and he notices the cut on your forehead. “What happened there?” he asks, his tone shifting to one of concern. 

“It’s nothing, just a little mishap,” you reply with a shrug and a small reassuring smile. 

John nods, still eyeing the cut with a concerned look. Before he can respond, the sound of Dutch’s voice cuts through the air. 

“There they are!” Dutch strides forward with Hosea, catching the attention of the other gang members. The atmosphere shifts to one of eager anticipation as they approach to welcome you both back.

Arthur and you quickly hitch your horses, and Dutch’s eyes light up with a mix of relief and curiosity. 

“You two look like you’ve had quite the adventure,” he says with a grin. “Let’s hear what you’ve got for us.”

You and Arthur follow Dutch and Hosea inside the house, nodding to the other members who offer warm welcomes at your arrival. 

Once inside, the four of you make your way outside to the terrace to discuss the details. The afternoon sun casts a warm glow over the camp, and you all settle into a comfortable spot.

Hosea’s eyes shift to the cut on your forehead. “You alright?” he asks, his tone filled with concern.

You give a small nod, trying to brush off the worry. “I’ll be alright. Can’t say about the coach, though.”

Hosea raises an eyebrow, his expression turning thoughtful. “The coach, huh? Did something go wrong?”

“The job went well initially. Arthur and I got what we needed, but then things went sideways on the way back.”

Arthur picks up the story, his voice steady. “We ran into trouble. More guards came in hot on our heels, forcing us into some rough terrain. Lost the coach, and then we ended up falling into a river with it.”

You chime in, “The river swept the coach away, taking all the loot with it. We couldn’t salvage anything.”

Dutch’s expression falls. “So, you lost it all?”

Arthur nods, looking apologetic. “Yeah. We couldn’t recover the goods.”

Dutch’s face reflects a mix of disappointment and frustration. “Well, that’s a shame. We coulda used that haul. Least you two are alright, though.”

Hosea tries to lighten the mood. “We’ll bounce back from this. The important thing is that you made it back safely. We’ll sort out the rest.”

Arthur reaches into his satchel and pulls out the small pouch of jewelry from you and a few clipped bundles of cash. He holds them up with a faint, reassuring smile.

“Well, we didn’t lose everything. Reckon this might help make up for it.” 

Arthur hands Hosea the pouch, and Hosea inspects its contents. “With this and the cash we got, I’d say we’re lookin’ at around 800. That should help us get back on our feet.”

Dutch’s eyes light up with relief as he takes in the sight of the recovered items. “Well, that’s a right bit of luck in the middle of all this mess. Better than nothin’.”

Arthur nods, looking somewhat relieved. “Didn’t want to come back here and leave y’all thinkin’ we came up empty.”

Dutch claps Arthur on the shoulder, his mood lifting a bit. “Appreciate that. Let’s get this sorted and move on. We’ve got plenty of work ahead of us.”

Hosea looks over at you and Arthur with a nod of approval. “I gotta hand it to you both. Despite the rough patch, you came through. Good work out there.”

With that, Dutch and Hosea start discussing plans to distribute the recovered items and strategize the next steps.

Over the next few days, the gang once again begins to notice something distinctly different about you and Arthur. 

It’s not just the absence of shouting and tension, but a new, subtle intimacy that marks a significant shift in how you interact. While the first change was notable, this time it's even more pronounced.

Although you and Arthur have kept your more intimate moments away from the prying eyes of the gang, there’s a palpable difference in the way you connect. 

You’re often seen sharing quiet conversations, laughing together, and engaging in playful banter, with soft touches and exchanged smiles now part of your interactions. The closeness between you is evident, and it piques the gang’s curiosity once more.

Speculation runs rife among the camp members about the nature of your evolving relationship. They observe the affectionate gestures and tender glances, each theory more imaginative than the last. 

Despite the growing curiosity, you and Arthur continue to maintain your privacy. When questioned or approached, you both respond with a mix of amused indifference and casual deflection. 

You shrug off the gossip with lighthearted comments or evasive answers, enjoying the newfound closeness while keeping the details of your relationship to yourselves.

On this particular day, while you were engaged in a chore, you overheard Arthur speaking to Dutch, asking why he kept pairing the two of you together despite your apparent dislike for each other. 

You glance over from your place, noting how Dutch seems genuinely puzzled by the question.

“It wasn’t really my call,” Dutch says with a shrug. “That was all Hosea’s idea. I didn’t rightly agree with him and don’t know why the hell he was so insistent or thought it was a good idea, but I just went along with it.”

Arthur’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Both your attention shifts to Hosea, who is currently sitting nearby, absorbed in reading a newspaper. 

Despite his apparent focus on the paper, you notice a subtle smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. He doesn’t look up or acknowledge you both, but his expression clearly suggests he’s pleased with the outcome of his decision.

The revelation leaves you and Arthur with a mix of emotions, but the smirk on Hosea’s face makes it clear that he knew exactly what he was doing.

[meltedhorror]

We love just a sentient ball of rage and insecurity

[shittybundaskenyer]

✹ ▬   𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐃 𝐃𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐒, 𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒

rating: Explicit pairing: Arthur Morgan x F!Reader summary: it’s been half a year since you’ve last seen Arthur, and as you finish the last empty page of the journal he gifted you, a lone rider shows up down in the valley on a familiar, silver-dappled mare. warnings: high honor Arthur, reader is an artist herself, and very lonely, touch-starved, porn with feelings (and minimal plot), i’m not gonna lie 5k of this is just pure smut, cunnilingus, fingering, unprotected sex, love confessions, Arthur being a sweetheart, a little angst and emotional hurt/comfort, bittersweet ending word count: 8457  

a/n: i finally finished that wip i started cooking up during uni crunch time, but i’m proud to announce that i finished my master’s in graphic design and i’m finally fucking free of uni. it was a very depressive part of my life, i got completely burnt out in mind and soul too, so writing and drawing was more like a burden than something i enjoy. but now, now i’m so full of new passions, especially towards writing that i couldn’t wait to finish up this piece. i also want to thank everyone who came by to read my stuff even though i haven’t posted anything since like last october or something, love you all! (also special thanks to @wintersongstress​ bc you kept me going whenever you said a few kind words) <3

MASTERLIST   |   ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

In the spring Big Valley blooms.  

Fireweed and balsamroot and irises, blue and purple and the prettiest shades of yellow and pink, dotting the landscape like careful brushstrokes of a painter’s handiwork. The earth is alive here, black and red from the fallen fir and pine needles, with mushrooms and bugs hiding under the rotting, fallen logs. 

It’s a beautiful morning—pink from the rising mist and the early sunlight.

You sit on the porch of your small cabin, its wood creaking as a gentle breeze sweeps over the surrounding forest. Songbirds confess their love above, chirping a sweet melody that sings to your heart just the same. You finish your coffee and place the worn tin cup on the windowsill behind you, leaning back in your chair to pick up your journal. 

It’s almost full now; barely a few empty yellowed paper is left. You turn another page, sketch the shape of an eagle with the last chunk of your pencil, so small you can barely hold it right. It’s been many months since Arthur gifted it to you.

It’s been months you’ve seen him the last time too. 

Your heart aches a little when the orioles begin another love-song in your small garden. A sweet smell reaches you, a late-blooming wild cherry tree, its honey lulling in bees and birds and flies and the first butterflies of the year. You draw them too, detail their wings and hair and the tiny spikes covering their legs. With shaky, unladylike handwriting you write their names there too. 

WESTERN TIGER SWALLOWTAIL

MONARCH

WILD DOVE

As you write the last word, your hand lingers over the drawing, then on the freshly pressed forget-me-not on the other page, it’s blue seeped into the paper around it like a watered up, inky halo.

Little dove. Arthur's name for you.

Christ, you miss him. 

Worry clawed under your ribs for so long you no longer feel the ache. You know what kinda life he lives, what he does in the name of survival, the largest devil. You still like him. You still feel anxious every time you go into the town post office and realize that there’s no letter nor telegram from him. He’s been… kind to you. Real kind, even though no one else was. 

You draw in a slow breath and flip the pages back right to the first one. It’s crumpled a little from all the time you’ve returned to it before. A simple sketch faces you, the lines and shading so different from your own, patches of light and shadows adding together a face that stares at you every time you look in a mirror. All the imperfections, all the ugliness and beauty your likeness wears, all the messy hair and sparkling eyes he’s grown to know. 

Little dove, says a handwritten line under the portrait. Draw me all the other beauties of this land.

You did. Christ, you did it all and he’s still away.

You sigh, fold the journal and wipe your hand in your skirt. It’s still muddy from all the work you’ve done in the garden after you've awoken, so you don’t mind a bit of graphite there too. 

The journal returns to its palace on the windowsill, beside the coffee cup and a pack of cigarettes. 

Big Valley turns into shades of gold as the sun rises above the treeline, illuminating the wet dirt roads that twist below like giant snakes. You take a deep breath and rise to meet the day. There's a prickling warmth on the line of your spine, a trail of goosebumps that make your breaths come out shaky. Maybe it's a sign. Maybe it's fate. 

You stop, halfway turned to the door already, and a rider appears on the winding paths in the distance. 

You stand and you watch, frozen in place as the familiar silver-dappled mare canters closer and closer, its rider swaying in her saddle, one hand grasping the reins and the other dangling lazily beside his body. Black hat, a worn leather coat, sky blue shirt and shining spurs. You don’t have to see his eyes to recognize the sun on horseback. 

After a few moments he halts the mare before your cabin, her breath puffing against his hand as he pets her forehead after swinging himself down from the saddle. “Good girl.” 

You grow weak in the knees, lip trembling as you suck in a hasty breath. Do all wishes come to fruition if one draws it enough times? Do paper, words and shaky lines have this much power?

He walks up the first two steps of your porch, taking off his hat to reveal golden brown locks, long and messy now, wet with sweat and yesterday's rain still dripping from the trees.

There’s a moment of silence when your eyes meet. 

A moment of truth when he says your name. 

You open your mouth, then close it. There’s so much you want to say, so much you feel, yet the only sentence that leaves your lips is, “You've come just in time for breakfast.”

*

The silence is awkward at first when you pour him the remaining lukewarm coffee, and even more when you prepare breakfast and lay out everything on your small dining table. Your bed is unmade, there’s mud stuck on the doormat, your laundry stacked in a high pile in the corner and all the dried herbs from last autumn hang low from the ceiling of the single room cabin. 

Your home is as much a mess as you are, but it’s well lived-in, like a body. A shell housing a soul. 

Arthur doesn’t mind. Never did.

“Is this the wrong time?” he asks when you cut fresh onion leaves on a plate, still dewy from the morning mist that rolled over the valley. The knife stops in your hand. You can hear him breathing, calm, even exhales, yet it feels like he’s not even real. 

“No,” you press out, uncertain in your own thoughts, and you keep cutting the leaves until they’re nothing more than a fleck of green pulp on the white porcelain. You don't even realize when he stops you. You just feel the unusual warmth, radiating from around the back of your palm, through your whole arm, until something wild and ancient flickers alive in your ribcage. 

“Are ya alright?” The calloused hand retreats and the knife falls from between your fingers. 

“I—” you swallow, throat suddenly dry and choked with tears at the same time, “half a year is a long time.”

He closes his eyes and hangs his head. ‘Course it is. You thought he was dead. You thought he got taken to prison and they hanged him like a dog. 

The food remains untouched as he swipes a hand over his jaw and takes a deep breath, leaning back in his chair. You watch him, still cautious, taking a mental note of every little change. A small scar freshly healed on his cheek. His beard longer, a bit messy. His eyes oh so tired, like he hasn't slept in days. 

“You want me to go? I get it if ya have a husband now an’ I don’t want to cause tr—”

“No!” you almost shout, panicked, and his gaze searches your face. Why do you behave so goddamn strange? You wanted him here for months! You wanted him, wanted— “Jesus, there’s no husband, okay?”

The corner of his lips curl upwards a little at that. Crow's feet crinkle in the corners of his eyes. Those tiny laughing-lines around his nose move.

“I guess I just… I’ve been alone for a long time,” you sigh and force down a bite of cheese-topped bread. Your stomach protests loudly, it wants to escape the hunger or the nerves, you can’t decide yet. 

Arthur takes that as a sign to take a bite from his food too, and you know he's hungry. As you watch you realize how tired he is. How worn—like a saddle neglected in care and used until the leather cracked, then split. He eats up the whole slice of bread before you manage to take your second bite. 

The awkward quiet persists, gets stronger even, but there's so much to say and so little courage you can muster. 

He’s the one who finally runs a bloody knife through the silence.

“Did ya draw for me?”

There’s a distant longing in his voice that’s almost crystal clear. You nod, the nerves tangled in your belly easing. He remembers, he knows. He wants to see.

You bring in the small book from the porch while he finishes his food, and he’s already lighting a cigarette when you arrive and lay the leather-bound pages in front of him. He smiles at how worn it looks, how much fingerprint-stained page edges are littered throughout the journal. It’s well-loved, and well lived-in too. 

You silently watch as he flips through a few pages, tracing a finger over bucks and birds and butterflies, over the scratchy sketch lines you immortalized nature with. The Grizzlies covered in snow. Clovers and mushrooms. Your home with opened windows and flowers hanging in pots from the roof of the porch. 

“I’m sorry I missed all this,” he says softly, looking up at you like you’re the sun and the moon and the whole world. So fond, so tender it makes you ache for something that never can be yours. “I’m sure this place is pretty in the winter.”

You nod. You don’t tell him about almost freezing to death when the storms rolled in from the mountains in the spring. You don’t tell him about the roaming gangs either, about the bastards camped at the Hanging Dog ranch or the man who got eaten by a bear in his own home. This is a dream world. A valley that can be as easily a good dream as it can be a nightmare. You want it to be a good dream for him. An escape. You know what life he lives. What he runs from. 

“It’s even prettier now,” you finally answer, watching him reading your messy handwriting beside the drawings. Forget-me-not. White clover. Blue iris. “Spring came very late, everything is still blooming.” You bite into your lip and after a few seconds you ask, “wanna see?”

Arthur looks up at you and something flickers in his eyes. Maybe hope. He nods, puts out his cigarette, dusts off his hat and puts it back on his messy hair. 

“Only if you let me draw ya again.”

*

Everything around you buzzes and dances and it’s full of life, the valley, the word ‘spring’ written by the hand of Mother Earth in flowing rivers of wildflowers and overgrown grass. Orioles chirp not far away, singing another lulling love-song, matching the rhythm a creek makes above, crystal clear meltwater digging its course from stone and black earth towards south. 

Arthur stands a bit farther away from you, with his journal and a piece of charcoal in hand, putting the scenery to paper in blacks and greys and negative spaces. Or you think he’s drawing the Grizzlies and forests and farms littered down in the valley like mushrooms popping from the ground after a lukewarm summer rain. 

But instead, he draws you.

The crown of flowers sitting atop your head—the girls at camp taught him how to make one, he said, smiling. The arch of your lips. The shadow of your lashes. The tangles in your hair, the dirt on your skirt, the sun glinting in your eyes. 

When he’s done he walks back to you, flops down into the grass beside you to show you his work. The scenery really is just the background. Hasty, faint lines of mountain-spines and plants that curl towards the sun. But you, you’re detailed like an oil painting, from the wrinkles in your dress to the imperfections of your face. 

“You wanted to draw the land, ain't ya?” you ask him, knowing, smiling at him as he slips his charcoal into the cord on his hat. He gives you a lopsided smirk, then wipes his hands on the rough fabric of his jeans.

“I just found something so much more pretty,” he looks into your eyes when he says that and it burns like how maybe the sun’s surface would burn. You know there’s a blush rising through your neck, up to your cheeks, and you hope he thinks it’s from the warmth of the day. But he would be a fool to believe that. 

“Are ya tryin’ to flirt with me?” you feel like a child. A giddy girl getting her first carved wood pony to play with. You never believed him when he told you you were beautiful. You couldn’t. Yet here, now, in the all-revealing sunlight he seems like his words are genuine. Much more pretty.

He leans back on his hands, the sun caressing his face when he finally takes off his hat. His laughing-lines crinkle. 

"Do ya remember last year, when you gave me a kiss?"

If you haven't been burning up, you certainly are now. Something wild and primal stirs in your belly, something that’s very close to want and need. Of course you remember. Of course you can’t forget the way you leaned in and gave him a little peck on the lips, a bare press just because his plump lips looked so goddamn kissable and because you were so goddamn drunk. It doesn’t mean you didn’t want to do it sober. You just didn’t have the courage. But with amber whiskey in your stomach and his hand on your knee you couldn't be stopped. It was the day he left. The last day you’ve seen him alive until now.

You nod and look away. You don’t want to think about a dark future when Arthur wants to talk about kissing you. Jesus Christ.

“I wanted to draw your lips ever since then. Sometimes I did when I dreamt about you. Always smiling, always with flowers in your hair. But I never got it right.”

“I never thought you was a romantic, Mr. Morgan,” you’re truly blushing now, breaking the eye-contact, and picking at your nails instead because hearing this is a lot. The man you were waiting for months, the man you thought you loved and was dead, now sits here beside you, making poetry bubble in your chest. An oriole sings there too, trapped by ribs and muscle, red like the rising sun. 

“I— I’m never good with words,” he shrugs, picking on a blade of grass between his fingers. “Ya know I never was.”

You smile at him, still flushed. 

“But I thought about the time we spent together in the past and I… I realized I was happy with ya.”

What is this if not a confession?  

You reach for him. Slowly, like one would comfort a spooked horse, sliding your palm over his scarred knuckles until the grass he was twirling falls to the ground. He watches your hands on each other, yours so small and mostly soft compared to his large, battle-worn fingers. 

"I was happy with ya too," you whisper, so damn afraid yet you know he said it first, it must mean something—

He looks at you, looks right through you, gazes into the deepest depths of your soul where you already carved a space for him months ago. He looks at you and he knows this is not some sick joke, that your mutual attraction was not some mirage you chased for so long. 

He leans in and the world falls dead quiet. His breathing, shaky and unsure and deep, the only sound you can concentrate on as he nudges your nose with his own. Right where you left off half a year ago. Right where you imagined this in every dream. 

You nuzzle him, brush your lips against the corner of his mouth, his beard prickling and coarse, but his parting lips are soft, gently cupping your own between them, slow and careful and so goddamn sweet. He moves, hands reaching for you as you try to deepen this embrace, reciprocating the kiss, turning your body towards his. His fingers land in your hair, getting caught on the tangles like trouts on a net, and he cups your cheek with his other hand, so warm, it's like the sun is cradled in his palm. 

Maybe you're his sun. Maybe he's yours.

The kiss turns needy after a while, tongues dart out and teeth nip gently on plump, rosy lips. He keeps you close, closer, until your noses are squished together and his hair falls into your eyes and you can feel your lashes tickling his skin. He kisses you like no one ever did. He kisses you like it means something. 

Need awakens inside you with the force of a hundred galloping horses as his hands find your waist, the line of your spine, the collar of your dress, the outwards curve of one breast. They doesn't move further. It doesn't mean you don't want them to. 

Arthur pants against your mouth as you move away, the taste of tobacco and wild cherries still intense on your tongue. 

"Will ya draw me one more time?" you ask quietly, against the side of his face, your words tangling into the wild mess of his beard. 

"How?" you look him in the eye and he already knows, yet you make a show of it as you pull on your dress and slowly bare yourself to him. There's not a soul for miles, no one to disturb this bubble of peace and strawberry champagne haze you made for yourselves so you're not ashamed. And when you discover that wild flame burning in his eyes— 

Your body becomes alive with a meadow consumed by fire, overgrowing and rotting and oozing honey from every pretty flower. You shed your chemise. The shoes. Bloomers come last, already stained with grass and bright yellow pollen. 

You sit nude in front of him, a feast for his hungry eyes, yet he doesn't stare at you for long. He wants to commit this to paper. He wants to see this every day from now on—the curve of your breasts, the wide of your hips, the hair nestled between your legs, the smile you can't keep off of your lips. 

"For the road," you chuckle with a wink, watching how he scribbles away in his journal. "For lonely nights." 

"I could put this up in a gallery and take ya to Paris," he answers with a piece of charcoal in his mouth, smudging the powder on the paper. "Wanna see the world little dove?"

You know it's just gentle banter, but your heart aches the same. You both know it would be impossible. Him leaving this country, his family—a woman is not enough for that. 

"I think I have everythin' I wanna see right in front of me," you smirk, then move, not caring about the drawing anymore, and he doesn't care either, gripping your bare thighs as you rise to settle in his lap.

It's spring and you're a flower, and you bloom too, unfolding your body like petals, legs and arms slowly sliding away to reveal soft flesh. There's no shame when Arthur looks up at you like you're the goddamn sun and the stars and the wind caressing his face. Maybe you are when you reach down and slide a thumb over his brow, the downwards arch of his eyelid when he closes his eyes. Two gorgeous pools of blue-green look up at you when your finger slides lower, over his lips, to dig in and make them part, wet tongue darting out around a small kiss. 

You watch him. His eyes, his mouth. 

His long, golden lashes lower, a dark kind of fire ignited in his gaze, doin’ the only sin he does not regret committing— wanting you.  

He grabs onto your side, the flesh on your hip and stomach, leaves heat in his wake there, large palm-shaped sunspots that ooze light into your bloodstream. Christ, you want him to touch you more. To make you burn, to make you into a flame that needs his tending.

"You're so damn pretty, little dove" he murmurs in that low voice, watching how a single flower of forget-me-not falls from your hair and lands on the top of your breast, trapped in a bead of sweat like a fly in amber honey. 

The back of his head hits the ground, like it's a pillow woven from freshly sprouted grass and wild flowers and wet earth, and he moves you in his lap, lower, where you can feel him, hard and oh so ready but still waiting for your move. 

The spark is ignited. Your sun burns inside your ribcage for this man, a heart shaped from light, and you reach between the two of you to get him rid of his pants. Arthur doesn't move, but he lets you pull up his shirt, over a strong stomach and golden brown hair, over old scars that faded into silvery lines, to a ribcage housing a kind heart. 

"Will ya have me, Arthur?" you lean close to him, your bellies touching, your hand still restless at the buckle of his gun-belt, and he sighs into your hair, hips twitching at your eager request as he leans in to lay a gentle kiss on your temple, then the arch of your eyebrow. 

"'Course, sweetheart," he reaches up, cradles your nape as he curls his other arm around your waist, turning you until the soft earth cradles you like another lover.

Your bare legs fall open as he settles, with his hand on your knee, his thumb rubbing the spot where the broken grass stained it green. You should be shy. Ashamed. Vulnerable. You should clench your thighs tight, feel the need to be modest, yet your body betrays you even further when Arthur places his other hand on your side, making space for himself in the cradle of your hips. 

His shirt is gone. 

You watch him for a few eternal seconds, the way his eyelashes cast starlike shadows over his ruddy cheeks as he gets an eyeful of your flushed cunt. 

"Gonna have to work ya a little," he says, voice low and husky, thumbs drawing circles into your flesh, as if he's soothing a spooked creature. 

There's not enough time to get your fill of his body; the hair-dusted muscles of his chest and arms, the stubble-peppered neck that leads into a strong jawline, the strand of honey brown hair that carefully curls around his ear. You subconsciously nod instead, rapidly, sliding your hand over his own, tugging on his worn knuckles until he's blanketing you with his body. 

Arthur smiles into your hair for a second when his free hand trails up your side, up through the valley of your breasts and the bend of your neck until he can cradle your head, his fingers caressing, thumb parting your lips so when he arrives with his own you're already panting a shivering exhale into his mouth. Yes, kiss me. Conquer my lips. Conquer this monster that is my body. 

He kisses you, softly at first, cupping your upper lip between his, then the bottom one, and then, just then he lets a hot breath mingle with your own before his tongue finds its way around yours. He kisses you with all the need a starving man can feel, suckling on your lips until they are flushed, swollen, his worn thumb sliding over them once more, between gentling pecks of affection and softly opening eyes. He's mesmerized by the sight of you like this, oh so close, oh so pretty in the sunlight. 

You get bold under his stare, curling your fingers into the hair on his nape, into the coarse tangles of his beard before you give him the same treatment he gave you, mapping the plush, hot rise of his bottom lip with your thumb. He kisses the tip of it, then leans in to lay gentle presses on your forehead, your temple, the corner of your mouth. You want to chase him, coax him into another kiss, but he murmurs something against your skin instead, hefting your leg higher at his side, and your belly aches with the burning sun that grows inside it, pressed flush to his. 

"Lemme show ya somethin'," he almost whispers, and he descends downwards, draws a curling vine of blooming ivy in the shape of kisses, at the hollow of your throat, at the top of one breast, then the other. He takes your nipples between the same lips you've kissed mere moments ago, still wet, and he almost makes a show of it when a surprised moan slips out from your chest. 

Arthur commits the shape of you into his memory, counting each rib, each valley and hill your body has, the soft of your stomach when he arrives there, a star-circle of hot lip-presses, and then lower, at the edges of a gentle trail of wiry hair that leads between your wide-open legs, and then just shy of your cunt, a place so sensitive the kiss wrecks your whole body with a shiver. 

He looks up at you for a second, lifting your legs over two strong shoulders, soothing you again with circling caresses on your thigh, even though his eyes are ravenous, chest heaving as he sucks in panting breaths . The want inside you blooms alive. If you could be a forest, you would burn gladly under his hands. 

The idea is no stranger to you, you've read your fair share of off-shelved romance novels, but experiencing such an act transcends every sweet worded description you've ever seen when Arthur makes his intention clear with a look full of promises. 

Not letting you suffer longer, he leans in and softly nuzzles his way between the folds of your cunt; kisses you there. 

Your body grows weak, open, and you helplessly grab into the earth beside you, clawing up dirt and fresh grass, sinking your fingers deep, like you could plant your roots here. A noise escapes you, surprised and breathless, and Arthur mutters encouragement against your mound, " beautiful… ", then strokes his tongue over a spot where nerves meet in a most sensitive bundle. 

He sucks and licks there, kissing your flesh like he had been kissing your mouth, with his eyes almost closed, cheeks flushed and beard scraping your skin. It tickles, it scratches, it makes a flock of burning butterflies flick alive inside your belly, it makes want trickle from your cunt when he arrives there. You feel like you're already unraveling, the foreign pleasure spreading through your body like fungi webbing a forest floor, and at every spot his skin touches you, you bloom.  

Like a meadow. Like a sun.

He hums encouragement, holds your thighs firmer, pushes his tongue against you harder. You try to squirm, hands scrambling, his mouth curling into a smile at your folds, and you moan, freely, maybe the first time in your whole life, just for him. 

He pleasures you so effortlessly, so gladly, and in all the tenderness he offers you feel like you could drown. His mouth is relentless. His kisses even more are. You can't help but wretch open your eyes to look down and find him buried there, in the cradle of your hips, face flushed red and eyes sparkling so pretty when they meet your own. You don't have control over your body anymore. 

You blindly reach for his hair, your head thumping back against the earth, spine arching, shoulders rolling into the dirt. "That's it," he murmurs between suckling kisses, and you grind your cunt up, up into his mouth because Christ, you're almost there. 

Your eyes flicker open, like candle flames, neck curved back, and you can see the Grizzlies like this, snow-capped, glinting like crystals, between blades of green and sky blue iris flowers. Your whole world turns upside-down. 

It's too good—his lips, his tongue, his hot breath fanning against your weeping opening, yet you can't get there, not really, not before Arthur lifts away and the world tries to right itself but turns out all wrong. He is panting, hair messy from all the torture your fingers did on his strands, glinting golden in the sun. 

Your thighs slip away, off his shoulders as he returns to you, hastily wiping his face in the back of his hand, lips already seeking your own, soothing you. He tastes tangy, more salt than sweet, like you, and the forest of emotions threatens to split your ribcage open when he presses his mouth to your temple. 

"What's wrong?" you ask quietly, whisper the question into his opened lips between two tender kisses, and he answers with a breathless "nothin'."

"Have to open ya up," his fingers squeeze you, harder on your side, and he brings his free hand up to his lips, licking his fingers. That same sinful hand returns to your belly, then lower, cupping your whole cunt in his palm before you feel it, the thick finger teasing at your opening, spreading the wetness, and then gently, slowly slipping inside without any resistance. 

Arthur nudges your nose with his own when your eyes flutter closed, lashes tickling his cheek, and he kisses you again, moving his finger inside you, a slow, purposeful stroke. 

"Look at me, little dove," he whisper-commands, curling that finger in, making you gasp into his mouth. "Look at me. Yeah, that's it." He almost smiles when your eyes meet his own, and your belly aches as he pulls out his finger and adds a second. They glide in so easy, you can feel his palm growing sticky against your cunt. You want to be embarrassed, but he just stifles a groan against your neck when your pussy squelches, your pleasure steadily rising with the clever thrusting of his fingers.

Shit, if his fingers feel like this inside you, you can't even imagine how his cock will. 

He builds you up steadily, like a castle, like a temple, like a stairway right to the sun, and he doesn't give you a warning when he crams in another finger, three now, stretching you truly and good, shushing you with his lips, kissing you breathless until your legs yield and shake. 

"That's it," he murmurs, kisses you thoroughly, panting against your lips as your cunt squeezes tight around his fingers. "That's good."

His name escapes your throat, a plea, and you're barely hanging on by a thread now. Arthur is tender in his movements, but not too gentle, making space for himself inside you, making your poor heart flicker and trash under your ribcage like a trapped bird. He kisses you again, with opened lips, tongue clashing with yours, your teeth catching on the side of his face, a right mess, and his fingers slow, then gingerly slide out to lay drenched in your slick on the burning skin of your thigh. 

You whine at the loss. Truly, desperately. Such an unladylike sound, yet it rings sweet against Arthur's neck. 

You feel so empty.

"Shh," he quiets you, then gently grabs your hand, caressing a thumb over your knuckles, and guides it down, over the still buttoned waist of his pants, where his achingly hard cock strains against the fabric. You gasp a surprised "oh" between his lips, but follow his hand eagerly, helping him with the buttons. "Touch me, darlin'."

You do. Jesus, you do.

You worm your hand between the fabric and his feverish skin, mapping out the shape of him with curious touches. Even though you're inexperienced, Arthur's body teaches you what feels good for him without a guiding word. You grasp him, gently at first, and then firmer, and stroke your hand over his cock until your palm curls around the flushed head of him, finding a bead of wetness there. His stomach jumps, muscles tensing against you, his breath hitching sweetly beside your ear when he kisses you there too.

Did he feel a similar curious excitement like you do now, when he stuffed you full of his fingers? 

"You're a natural, sweetheart," he smiles at you, cheeks blooming a pretty red, and you feel his hand returning between your legs, thick fingers pushing inside you again. "Ya think you can take me?"

You can't answer, not at first, too distracted by the stretch, by the burning want that blooms in your belly, by the idea of taking Arthur. You kiss him instead, stroke him faster until he has to break away from you to collect himself. 

"Fuck me," you whisper to him, sweet as wild strawberries, your lips brushing the side of his face and he smiles, truly, teeth and crow's feet and wrinkles and all, and Christ, you want him so much it almost hurts. 

"Now, you really want me to fuck ya?" 

You don't know if he wants to tease, or he's truly concerned about your decision, but you give him a very pointed look, releasing his cock and reaching for his hand that is still pleasuring you, slowly pulling it away until you're empty once more. 

"Arthur," you kiss him again, almost pleading and he can't deny you longer. He worries at your bottom lip for a second, then presses his mouth to your chin. 

"Spread 'em pretty thighs for me then," he murmurs as he comes closer, bracketing the backs of your thighs with his own, and then hefting your legs around his hips. You open yourself willingly, freely, feeling the heat of him oh so close, and you help him a little, push on his jeans until his cock is free, thick and heavy and hard against the inside of your thigh.

It's the first time you see it. It's the first time your cunt clenches on nothing and it makes you desperate. 

"If I hurt ya, say so and I'll stop, alright?" he says as he gives you one last kiss before leaning back and taking a hold of his cock. Christ, you want to watch. To know how he will fit inside you, but the strong bulk of his body blocks your view, sea-colored eyes going half-lidded as he watches your every reaction, sliding against your folds once, twice, and for the third time his fat cock catches on your slick opening. 

You gasp and pull him into a kiss with renewed hunger, and it's perfect to muffle your sounds as he slowly, carefully pushes into you. 

He has maybe an inch or two inside, but you're already feeling like you could burst, like you could rip apart at the seams and bloom into a bed of wildflowers oozing honey over black earth. 

It's— 

It's everything. 

You can feel his heartbeat race against your breast, and you can feel it inside you, lighting you up, making the unfamiliar stretch good, making it divine. You pant into his mouth, let him nuzzle your cheek as he murmurs praise, his free hand coming up to cradle your jaw and caress your lips. 

"That's it, good girl," he whispers, as breathless as you, and you feel him move, deeper, making way for himself when there's barely any. It hurts and it doesn't. Aches like a good day of riding in the sun. Warm. Stretched. A funny sway in your head when it's over. A pleasure-pain so perfect you never want him to stop. "Ya fit me like you was made for me."

"Christ," you hiss, hands curling into his neck and shoulder, digging into the meat of them, almost drawing blood as Arthur's hips meet yours, his hot length fully settling inside you. "Arthur, Jesus I—,"

"Shhh," he quiets you softly, one hand cupping the back of your palm on his shoulder, massaging it until your fingers yield, no longer digging into his flesh, and he brings your hand to his lips, kissing your knuckles. A distraction. A gesture so sweet your body warms even more. 

"S-sorry," you manage to say, out of breath and tingling all over. He's so deep inside you you can feel it. All the space he fills, all the ways pressure makes you twitchy and sensitive and ready to burst. He kisses your fingertips next, the inside of your wrist, all the while his other hand smooths over your trembling thigh. 

"Watchu sayin' sorry for?" his question is a mere whisper against you, a soothing rumble at the side of your face. He waits for you to settle, to let you calm like a rapid summer storm, keeps himself still until the way he holds you open becomes from an unfamiliar intrusion into a shivering spark of something. Can pleasure feel like this too? Can the joy of joining coat your bodies like crushed candy that melts in the sun? 

You can't focus on his question, not until he caresses your brow with a finger, and even then you don't know the answer. You just close your eyes and tremble, too lost in the closeness of him, too distracted by the spark of pleasure bubbling hotly inside your belly. 

"Tell me when I should move," he brushes your hair back, wipes the sweat that started beading at your temple. "Or tell me to stop."

"N-no. Don't stop, please Arthur. Jus'... just be slow," you murmur against him, your words slurred into his beard, lips brushing a scar there. 

He nods then, reassures you with a small kiss that says "I've got you, don't worry," and it's enough for you. Enough to brace for the inevitable outwards pull. 

You have to dig your fingers into his arm, have to cling to him for dear life, because even though his movement is careful, you still want to rip apart from the seams, just from his cock gently grinding into your cunt. 

You groan, dear Christ, and you clench on him, the pleasure-pain so intense it rushes you towards the edge with the speed of lightning striking a lonely tree out in the prairie. 

"Yes, sweetheart, open up for me," he praises you, licking the same fingers he stuffed inside you earlier and returning them between your legs, feeling where he holds you open, and then drawing a gentle circle on your clit, another sharp sparkle of pleasure, and you whine. "Can you come like this?"

You can't answer with words, your throat locks up and tears well in the corners of your eyes as you nod eagerly, racing towards an edge that ends in pure free fall. So he keeps his slow torture sweet, a purposeful grind of his hips and knowing touches with his fingers and you pant, into his neck and then into the soft grass, your head lolling to the side, and even though you're outside, up in the mountains, there's barely enough air to fill your lungs. The only thing you breathe is Arthur. He trickles into your every vein, every muscle and fat and bone, blankets you in honey and dew and the warmth of the sun. 

"Look at ya, little darlin'," he says, fond, as he reaches for your face to give your flaming cheek a gentle caress. Your back arches as he pushes in again, his movement turning into longer, truer thrusts. "Look how good you take me."

"Shit, Arthur I—"

"Gonna take care of ya," he murmurs and leans back, settling on his haunches with his cock still rooted deep and your thighs wide open around his hips. 

He looks down at your body, at all the imperfections you hate, at all the unique curves of your form, at all the unevenly smooth skin and marks and scars. Then, at your face that is softened by a deep frown of pleasure. 

Your eyes meet. 

You can see the want flickering in his eyes like blue flames in a marsh, alive and hot, and maybe your own burns the same, because he can't control a hard thrust then. You almost yelp, but your joining is slick now, you can feel wetness collect on your cunt every time he pulls out, so the pain is nonexistent. 

"That—" you pant, sucking in a hasty breath, "that felt so good."

"Christ, darlin," he exhales on a smile, and digs the meat of his fingers into the bend of your knee and the puffy flesh of your cunt and you almost scream, the good kind of scream, as he thrusts in again, hard and deep. "You're so goddamn beautiful."

It's your turn to tense up, to clench on him, hot and full and barely hanging on by a thread. He makes you run down the hill of pleasure until you trip, until you're falling, until the pressure becomes too much and not enough all at once. Like graphite grinded into dust and swept by the wind, that's how you float too, towards his calloused hands and sun-worn cheeks and you're a parchment laid out flat, your body the same, bare and vulnerable until his fingerprints stain you, in forms of lilac bruises on your hips, in never ending paths of grey sunlight. 

He lets go of your leg, puts a palm on the soft of your belly, just above your cunt, and he feels himself there, moving, filling you so full, so good, so whole, until there's no more air to breathe and no more hill to tumble down on, only the vacuum of a night sky littered with stars, the inside of his irises, watching you as you come. Sudden, violent. 

Your body shakes as it sweeps you away, a fire eating you alive like candlelight makes a moth catch aflame, and Arthur leans down to kiss you through it, still fucking you, still not stopping when the too much hits, but oh, he's a great distraction, the way his soft lips apologize, the way his tongue reassures you sweetly that you're doing good. He hums into the kiss, nips on your upper lip as your hands rise and dig into his neck, keeping him close, trapped in your body like a butterfly in sticky honey. 

"Ya okay?" he asks softly, whispering the question onto the corner of your mouth, his hands curling around your shoulders, the back of your head. An embrace. Butterflies growing in the same cocoon. 

"Feels so good," you whimper, clinging to him, feeling his cock hit deep again, resuming a lost rhythm like one replays a song on a guitar. The same chords flowing for a dance practiced by lovers. "Ar-Arthur."

He keeps on going and you keep taking him, the grass crushing under you bodies and you’re sure your whole backside is gonna be green, just like his knees and palms are. It’s blurry from that, your mind so fogged by pleasure that the world swims, a sea of light and wildflowers and clouds, pools of piercing blue-green eyes and crooked teeth that snarl into a smile. 

“Do ya have one more for me?” his forehead knocks against yours, his rhythm slowing. 

You don’t understand the question, not at first, but his fingers return between your legs, rough on the sensitive flesh of your clit, circling oh so carefully, and you know, Jesus, you know you want to give him everything you can. 

"Arthur," you pant, your lips buried in his hair as he plants a humming kiss into the crook of your neck.

"Hm?"

"Don't hold back. Please. Wanna feel you even when you're gone," your tighten your legs around his hips, answer his thrust with the rise of your own, meeting him halfway, like how the sun meets the horizon when pink dusk falls over the valley. 

"Don't ask me that I—" he chokes on his words at your interruption, a soft kiss, placed right on the plump of his bottom lip. 

"Please,” you encourage him, plead him. You want this so much it almost hurts. Not where he splits you open. Not where he hits deep as he picks up his pace. No, it’s the chest where you ache, the rapidly beating organ that pumps and beats and jumps and flickers, a mass of red, a cluster of muscle that somehow houses all the feelings you have for this man. A heart full of adoration. A heart full of love.

He kisses you so hard it makes you dizzy. Makes the doves caged in your ribs escape and tear you open, leaving only a wide wound in their wake, a door that leads straight down to the pocket-universe you handcrafted in the shape of a golden-haired, glacier-eyed man. 

You can feel him getting close, his hard thrusts falling out of rhythm, his fingers urgent on your abused clit. It sits there, the pleasure in your belly, bubbling, spilling over as he desperately chases your own orgasm, fucking you into the ground almost, planting you like a flower, to bloom just for him, just so you can weave your roots together. 

Arthur’s arms tremble as he groans into your neck, pulls back to leave a kiss on the side of your mouth, not focused enough for a proper one and you can’t help yourself. That choking feeling you felt rising from the start overspills, makes a landslide, an avalanche. You swallow and look up at him, mesmerized by his half-lidded eyes, glinting in the sun like twin-lakes, his hands holding you tight to him, his cheeks ruddy from all the loving you did to each other. 

You slip, and the world tilts. 

"Love you," you murmur, breathless, and there's a sudden shudder against you, Arthur's hands going bruising on your flesh, and he's coming, halfway on his way of pulling out. The warmth startles you, and then his grunt too, when he pushes back inside, because it doesn't really matter anymore, with his seed spilling out beside his cock, and some sick, possessive part of him enjoys how you whimper when he stuffs you full again, everything too wet and too hot. You tremble in his hold, terrified and riled up all at once, because feeling him like this makes you a little stupid and so sick with love it aches. 

You come again from it, softly this time. 

"I'm so goddamn sorry," he groans, trying to play the gentleman, trying to erase memories surfacing. This is not like it was then. He can still do right by you.

"'S okay," you murmur, almost feeling drunk, out of your mind with the way his cock twitches inside you, spurting one last time. "'S okay, Arthur." 

You pull him closer, with your fingers in his hair, in his beard. He sags against you, body weak from both his climax and emotions, and he presses his forehead to yours. It's a thing almost more intimate than a kiss. A thing full of the unspeakable truth, but you're not ready for it, and he isn't either. 

He watches you for a few seconds, his eyes flickering, a candle flame in a storm, but finally, finally he gives you a small smile. It's just in his eyes, a secret thing, a treasure so little and so precious it needs to be protected from the ugly cold reality. 

"I don't wanna awaken false hopes inside ya," he starts, gently, like calming a wild horse, "but I can't leave ya here thinkin' I don't love you the same." 

That's it. That's the time for a tear that sneakily bubbles from the corner of your eye and slides down to the calloused pad of his finger still caressing your face. 

"I ain't a good man," he continues, voice impossibly soft, "but I always wanted to do right by ya."

"Arthur," you tremble as you whisper, your hands on his nape, in his hair. Your mouth brushes his brow as you lean in. "Just come back to me. I don't care when. Jus' come back alive."

He nods, then buries his head into your neck, kissing your heated skin, writing a promise there with his lips. 

The sun moves and the surrounding mountains start to paint blue shadows over the blooming meadows so you move, first from the embrace, then from the flattened patch of grass and flowers you’ve tangled into each other on. You only put on your dress, no bloomers or shoes, his come still sticky on the inside of your thigh, and he leaves his shirt on the ground too, not ready to let go of this moment. 

He looks up at you, eyes sparkling, taking in the sight that is so pretty he wants to never leave. With flowers in your hair, a crown braided from daisies and forget-me-nots and marigolds, with dirt and grass on your skin, with a content smile in the corner of your mouth—you look radiant. 

Arthur sits with you in the grass, picking on wild-green blades and chewing on the end of one while he searches for the prettiest little flower blooming right next to your bare feet, nestled close to his. 

A perfect bud of white clover. Faith, love, good fortune.

He takes your hand in his, kisses your knuckles, and ties a ring around your finger from the stem, makes the flower sit pretty in the middle, like a chiseled, shiny rock of moonstone. 

What is this if not a vow? 

What is this if not a promise?

*

In the morning, after loving each other once more in the flickering moonlight, you wake up sore between the legs and dizzy from an intelligible emotion clawing deep inside your chest. The bed is empty next to you, the coffee that Arthur made still steaming on the table. You don't dress up, just pull the quilt over your body and run outside, onto your small porch to gaze down the valley bathing in golden light. A silver dapple mare gallops down there, on the spine of a mud-snake road. 

Arthur rides away. 

You stumble back to the chair on the porch, full with something bittersweet. Overripe cherries rotting on a tree. A black heart dripping honey. Your ribcage squeezing your lungs like a fist. You take a shaky breath and when he completely disappears from your view you lean back, almost sit down on a leather-covered book. It's a journal. Another one, smelling like fresh paper and horse hair and him.

You open it as you settle, the quilt drawn tight around your barely covered body.

There's a drawing on the first page, two wild doves huddled together, and a flower of white clover tied into a ring, pressed down into the page. 

Under it, scrawled hastily with Arthur's flowing handwriting:

I promise.

[marinsdoodles]

art for my kierthur fanfiction

I'm not great at writing but i love adding lil drawing too my crapy writing

[ironvampire]

i have an idea rolling around in my head of an rdr2 modern au where the gang all lives in a big house together and they're still criminals but doing like vigilante/ robin hood esque schemes, and they're all one big family (no micah and strauss) and dutch is actually a good dad. and it's mostly cute domestic fluff with a lil bit of angst (i can't resist torturing my baby girl arthur) but no one dies yippee, arthur centric but everyone has their own part. charthur and vandermatthews are main ships. would anyone actually be interested in reading that cause it's obvi very tailored to my own wants so idk if that is something anyone else wants too?

[angiechia]

"1895"s Chapter 14 is being made!!

yeeeey

also im going to start using this first hashtag to talk about the fanfic ⬇️

[springsylph]

WITCHING HOUR, CH. 1/3 — [18+]

(18+) - MARKED FOR EVENTUAL SMUT, MINORS DNI!

fem!reader x arthur morgan

summary: most people in the area had issues with coyotes. yours wore a cowboy hat, but you let him in anyways. tags: marked 18+ for smut in later chapters, reader has a backstory kinda (but also not kinda), referred to as lady/ma’am/etc, arthur doesn’t know how chickens work, i really don’t know my farm lore

word count: 5.5k

a/n: setting this pre-chapter 2 ish and post chapter 1, except it’s winter for realsies, Because I Can. and please no questions about chicken logistics or I Will Cry.

you can find a link to the playlist here!

read on ao3 here | masterlist

The fictitious “stranger,” by all accounts, was possessed. 

Possessed by an air so overwhelming, so sure, that it incited perversity in even the most upright.

He was an outlaw, by the cut of the whispers. The story went that he’d rolled in like a heavy fog, altogether quiet and unassuming, though still carrying the foreboding quality that preceded the raising of hackles. Mothers kept watchful eyes over their daughters, and more notably, the fathers brandished their guns. 

And yet—that maddening yet—the mothers seemed to care little for their own warnings, and even the fathers were envious of a man dripping with exploits they didn’t have the luxury of entertaining.

Luxuries and lack thereof aside, the fickleness of those who spoke of him had not gone entirely unnoticed; it lent no plausibility, no substance to the dream-like tales they’d crafted in their drunken stupors. The most substance you’d seen had been spewed into the shadowy corners of Valentine, pissed into not-quite pristine patches of snow, foul stench leaking out onto already foul streets before it followed you back to the farm.

It stunk. 

It stunk, and it loitered, and it’d been stealing from you.

Which is exactly why—when he shows up on your rickety porch just as winter has begun to bleed out into spring—you take up the mantle of digging your loaded barrel right into his sternum. 

—

The front door tremors behind you.

The stranger shifts on his feet. 

You shift with him, and gloved hands inch toward the stars in surrender not long after. 

Amorphous mass comes to your mind first, rather than man. You can only discern the more essential points of his appearance: the gloves, the satchel, the rifle slung over his back. Knives are stashed somewhere you can’t see—if he’s worth his salt—but everything else blends into the dark line of trees behind him. You swallow a rather painful yawn.

His hat, evidently beaten to hell and back several times over, sits low enough on his forehead to cast shadows over his features—though not low enough to completely obscure the faint outline of a face from your view. The rest of him only falls into place once you crane your head to find his eyes. 

As is customary in situations concerning your immediate safety, your throat constricts, and the second yawn you feel crawling up your throat nearly succeeds in asphyxiating you. 

Petty crimes would have granted him a slighter frame, but no petty crime you can think of could have afforded him the sturdy chest, the buckling of the air around him, the crooked line of his nose, clearly less cared for than his battered clothing. He’s still a little blurred—largely from a lack of sleep on your end, and the protection of his hat on his. Even so, the hard set of his gaze offers nothing other than the tale of cruelty lived and the promise of cruelty to come. 

There was no doubt. This had to be him.

(You might think him handsome, if not for the fact that it’s a quarter past three in the morning.)

The first breach in his stony composure that you catch is paper thin. Fleeting. And he’s quick to recover; any indication of surprise is sequestered with a blink. The second is an awkward shifting of his stubble-shrouded jaw, and you note with a squint that his bandana still hangs feebly off the jut of his chin. 

He admits defeat after a few clumsy seconds. Cracks a wicked smile, bright as the moon peeking out from behind the crown of his hat. But it falls away quickly. Somewhere in the distance a tree branch creaks, tiny shards of ice scattering to the ground and tinkling like bells.

He was calm. Entirely too calm, considering where he stood. His hands haven’t budged, and nothing in his stance hints at an intent to attack. If you didn’t know any better, you’d say he looks more annoyed by your presence than you are by his. 

You try not to think about his eyes. There’s something else in there, too. Apart from the agitation that radiates from them, that is. It lurks deep beneath the blue and wades through the slight dilation of his pupils; it urges him closer—or, is it you?—like the distance between the two of you isn’t sustained by the twitchy arms of a jittery woman holding a rifle.

But there’s an abrupt wind that fiddles with the cotton threads of your chemise, and you’re suddenly struck with the realization that no, your hunting rifle isn’t loaded, and in your haste to confront him you’d forgotten your boots and shawl. 

The nighttime chill, ever the tyrant, lodges itself where the wooden boards scratch eagerly at your bare feet. You were cold, so cold that it ached, and you were tired. But it’d do you no good to show your hand this early. So like the hiss of a rattlesnake, you keep your voice low, and you keep it lethal. 

The stranger is named by the venom falling from your tongue.

“You’ve got ten seconds to convince me not to unload this lead into your chest, Morgan.” You track the added prod of the gun to ground yourself, eyelids still heavy with sleep.

It doesn’t do much, as far as threats go. Morgan’s ever steady breathing still accents the now stagnant winter wind, a stark contrast to the throb of your heart striking your ribs. But a small scar, carved into the flesh of his right cheek, has made an almost imperceptible shift. The rest of his features take far more liberties with their movement—

—and he’s scowling.

Your heart strikes louder.

God, the shit you would shovel to be able to read minds. Animals have always been more your speed; people were a hassle—far too unpredictable, and they tended to reap fewer rewards. 

In your mind's eye, Arthur lies silently amongst the fallen snow, red unfurling behind him like wings. You’d hate to have to kill him, you really would. But there was nothing more dangerous than indecisiveness: it killed, and often relentlessly.

Only, you’ve been staring too long. It’s long enough to rouse Morgan from whatever state he’d been in before you’d spoken. He’s smart enough to keep his palms facing you, and he dips his head with the same mildness that one might use to soothe a startled mare. The scowl is tamped down, smile returning to him like water running through a scraggly creek. 

“Evenin’, Miss.” He drawls.

And it works. You hate that it works. There’s a dull heat that seizes your lungs at the low timbre of his voice, something akin to fire. 

No. No, nothing like it. It was more like the cheap whiskey you’d downed that first night working as a farmhand, all those months ago. It’d numbed your tongue, tumbled down your throat like sun-warmed stone, and simmered in your stomach. You hadn’t dared take another swig after that. Too dangerous. But it’s easy enough, passing your shudder off as a trick of the cold and cocking your head incredulously. 

“Showing up uninvited, and you can’t do me the courtesy of knowing my name?” One push of the rifle sends him back with surprising ease—away from the cabin, and away from that damned moonlight. “Ma’am will do you just fine,” you spit.

His smile fractures. Not enough to truly frighten, but enough to make your fingers clench. “You talk to all your guests like that, Ma’am?” 

You steel yourself. “Only the sneaks.”

At this, Morgan stills. Shuts his eyes. 

Did he really think you wouldn’t notice?

The farm had more issues with coyotes than crooks; that’s what you’d been hired to take care of, more or less. Your employers—the Campbells—were getting on in their years, and were in desperate need of someone to help keep watch during the nights. So imagine the surprise when you’d found not a coyote, but a wanted man sliding through the shadows. 

It’d angered you, that first time he’d gotten away. You’d only recognized him long after he’d left. But after that night, you’d made a show of firing off rounds into the nearby woods and roaming the perimeter of the grounds under the guise of a late-night hunt. 

From what you knew, he hadn’t come back to steal, but you knew you’d seen him lingering. Felt him watching. Waiting for something—but you’d made sure that every pop of your rifle drove him further and further from whatever it was that he’d been aiming for. And now Arthur Morgan is here.

He furrows his eyebrows, purses his lips, and they disappear for a moment when he goes to wet them before he speaks again, a little less amused. “Now you know I mean no offense—”

“No offense? Well, I’d kill to see what you and your ilk consider offensive.” 

The wind slams the front door shut. 

“My ilk?”

You wonder if it’d been your goal all along, trying to rile him up like this. Accusations slide out of your mouth and into the night air far too easily for it not to be. But the thought of anything other than catching him red-handed occupying your head unnerves you, sending you another two steps forward and into the powdery snow.

“Jesus, woman! Alright, alright.” Morgan’s eyes finally leave you, darting between where your feet dig into the cold ground and the muzzle of the gun pressed to his chest. He slumps his shoulders and looks up to the sky, still an ugly grey-black from the thin dusting of snow the night before. 

“Look,” he starts, hands fighting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose, “I don’t mean no harm. I swear it. I’m—just give me a minute to explain, will you? One minute, and I’ll be out of your hair.”

There’s a please somewhere in there, left unsaid yet still ever so loud. You think it might have left him in the puff of breath that still hangs above your heads; hot and heavy in his mouth, but turned to nothing but vapors once it misses its chance to solidify.

You eye him warily. This could be over and done with in a matter of seconds, and you might be able to knock that godawful mustache clean off of Sheriff Malloy’s face. You kill him—or turn him in so long as he didn’t bleed out, whichever came first—and get whatever bounty was nailed to his head. Use the money to get out. Get your freedom. Stop biding your time, and get revenge. 

And yet.

And yet.

“…You lying to me, Morgan?”

His shoulders straighten out, suddenly very tense. “‘Course not. You think me the lyin’ sort?”

Your voice flattens. “I figured that much was obvious.”

“Ouch, lady. Not willing to pull your punches for little old me?”

“You’d rather the lady use the gun?”

“Neither, thank you. And, speaking of which–” His chest deflates a bit, putting space between the two of you without having to step back. “—quit swingin’ that thing around. You’ll take someone’s eye out.”

Exhaustion mounting, you lower your rifle slowly. You keep your eyes trained on a pebble that’s escaped the snowfall relatively unscathed, not trusting yourself to look anywhere else. Conceding with a sniff, you toss your head toward the front door. It’s quiet, now. 

“Get in, before I change my mind—and no funny business, neither. Guns, knives, whatever else you’re hiding, drop ‘em. Right here.”

Too groggy to note the stalling of movement, you wait for the clinking of metal to stop. His boots retreat from your peripheral far more reluctantly than you expect. There’s a telltale groaning of wood, and you turn to find Morgan gazing down at you with an outstretched hand from where he’s hopped onto the porch. He murmurs with a reverence that you’re sure is misplaced, so quiet that you have to watch his lips to catch even a smidgen of what he says. 

“Yes, ma’am.”

This was a game to him. You knew games. And so when you go to place your hand in his it’s to eye him down, back him into whatever corner would hold him and keep him there till you knew why he’d spent the last month haunting your lodgings like a ghost.

Calloused fingers wrap around your hand like a vice, and when he’s guiding you and your icy feet up the stairs it strikes you that maybe—just maybe—your assessment of your situation had been far too impetuous. Arthur’s touch is surprisingly clinical, but even through the leather of his gloves, it was warm. Too warm. 

Ghosts weren’t warm. Or, at least you didn’t think they were. And Morgan, looking like the very paragon of the West, all bright eyes and honeyed words, had given you a glimpse of something far too beguiling not to investigate. It’s when he presses the back of his free hand to your wind-bitten cheeks that you wonder what your father might think.

“Chilled, right to the bone.” It isn’t so much a mutter as it is a rumble, reverberating somewhere deep in his throat and traveling up to where the two of you have made contact. You’re avoiding his eyes again, but you’re close enough now to be able to see his muscles working his neck. 

His smell overtakes you much like the cold has. The freshness of the pine needles still stuck to his coat makes up most of what you’re able to distinguish. A little bit of horse, too—he’d ridden here. Where exactly he’d hitched his horse was a mystery. But with the proximity of his sleeve to your nose, you can make out the faintest hints of a potent musk. It’s everywhere: in your nose, your mouth, under your skin. Every inhale turns your muscles into piteous liquid. There’s no hiding your shudder, this time.

Morgan suddenly yanks his hand back as if scorched, and schools whatever expression he’d been wearing prior into one of indifference. He hums. Frowns. 

“Let’s…uh, get you inside.”

You offer a tight nod and turn away, but Morgan is quick to the draw; he whispers a quick “pardon me,” and goes to retrieve the weapons he’d dropped in your stead. 

Oh. You’d forgotten. It seems he’d forgotten too, brushing the mixture of dirt and snow away and mumbling something about keeping his guns warm. You’re left standing dazed on the porch, skin still blistering from where his fingers had met your skin.

Morgan has the decency to look at least a little troubled when he returns. He places what he’s collected into your arms before opening the front door, and gestures for you to enter. You offer one last look to the moon before following him inside.

__

Your judgment on Morgan—Arthur, now—was still up for debate. But your punishment for rushing to catch him had been doled out almost immediately. 

For your feet, a numbness that the fireplace had been bullied into chipping away at. Your hands are still tight from the cold, and they sit tucked underneath your thighs with the added protection of a few blankets that’d been placed over your shoulders. Your eyes flick over from the fire to Arthur, and your chest tightens. 

He’s found his seat across from you: coat and satchel on the back of a chair he’s pulled from the dining table, big hands tapping away absentmindedly at his knees. With the coat set aside, there’s nothing to hide the first few buttons of his shirt that hang open, pitch black and rolled up to his forearms to account for the warmth of the fireplace. His hat remains, hair still tucked away and settled at the nape of his neck.

You’d both been sitting in silence for the last half hour, despite Arthur’s insistence on “one minute,” letting the cold of the outdoors thaw out before saying anything that might get the rifle pulled again. You did gain a bit of satisfaction at the slight tinge of red in Arthur’s ears; it seemed the cold had gotten to him, too.

You watch as his eyes wander over the furnishings of your cabin. Thankfully, the door to your bedroom is only slightly ajar, and the knot in your chest lessens. It wasn’t often (or ever) that you had visitors over, which meant that most of your things were tucked haphazardly into corners or set on kitchen counters.

The Campbells—generous as they already were—had insisted you take up residence in a cabin on their property that once belonged to a daughter of theirs. She’d long since moved out, but the light in their eyes at the thought of it being occupied again was undeniable. It wasn’t much, but it was yours. And Arthur was seeing all of it.  

“Don’t get too comfy.” You frown. “…Arthur.” He beams, and suddenly there’s something incredibly interesting lingering right by your foot. 

His name still feels foreign when it leaves you. At first, you’d taken it as a show of good faith; he’d sworn to keep his mud-caked boots off of your rug in exchange for keeping his feet from becoming bullet-ridden by the time the sun came up. Arthur, feeling like he’d gotten the shitty end of the stick, had joked that you may as well call him by his first name. The last person with the guts to threaten him with a shotgun had, so what was one more?

It was a weak threat, if one at all. You knew, and he knew, that you were just about the only person this side of the Grizzlies who was vaguely aware of who he was. You’d seen it in his face when you’d called him by name. It’d be an insult to call it fear; an expectation of an inconvenience would be more accurate.

Luckily for him, you didn’t care. Not right now, at least. Imposing as he was, you refused to be cowed into going along with whatever it was that he'd planned. 

Your heel messes with the leg of your chair. “Don’t you go forgetting why I brought you here in the first place.”

“Not quite sure if I’d use that wording—“

“Can it, Morgan.”

His jaw clicks shut this time, but he’s still got that goofy grin smeared onto his face when you chance a peek at him. You’ll let it slide, for now. You’ve stalled long enough.

“So. My eggs. You gonna tell me, or do I need to start pulling teeth?”

“No need,” Arthur assures, “shouldn’t be stickin’ your pretty little fingers in just anybody’s mouth, Ma’am.”

An outlaw and a flirt, to boot. Wonderful. You’re wondering how long it might take to chuck the nearest inanimate object at him when he pipes up again.

“You piss in somebody’s cigarette box, lady?”

“Did I piss—Morgan, quit it!”

This seems to reign him in a bit, and his smile dips.

“I’ll be frank, since you asked so kindly.” Arthur leans back in his chair, flexes his palms. “You had people tailin’ you.” 

You quirk a brow. Ah, that’s right. He didn’t know, couldn’t have. But just as you attempt to explain, Arthur holds out a hand to stop you and shakes his head.

“Killers.”

The hand fussing with the material of your blanket falters.

“...I beg your pardon?”

“Hired guns, Ma’am. Out for you. You’re real…fortunate, I’d been passing by when I was.” A rueful look clouds his face. “Not much to hire once I was through with ‘em, though.”

The quiet that follows isn’t entirely unfamiliar. He’s an outlaw, you muse. Things like this are to be expected. But it doesn’t occur to you to ask who they were, what they looked like, what they wanted. Because Arthur didn’t know, didn’t need to know, and you aren’t sure if you want him here when you wrap your mind around the sobering fact that your long-held suspicions now bear fruit. So, you settle for the obvious.

“You kill ‘em?”

His jaw twitches. “Nothin’ gets past you, Ma’am.”

“...‘Suppose I should be thanking you, then.”

“Got my thanks when I checked their pockets.”

“But—”

Arthur gives a grunt of protest. 

Jackass.

Though your concerns about theft were long gone, it doesn’t seem like he wants to talk about this any more than you do, so you do your best to set the conversation back on track.

“Well, uh…the eggs, then?”

The tension in his jaw lessens. Arthur unfurls a long leg, digs the heel of his boot out in front of him, and rocks his foot back and forth.

“You know these winters. I can tell you do—despite all the…” he trails off, nods the brim of his hat toward your newly cultivated relationship with the fireplace, and you flush. “So, I uh, started out sneaking a few off, along with some other things for my people back at camp. Snagged some extra rations. Kept an eye on you. Two birds, one stone.” 

“So it wasn’t just the eggs you’d been stealing, then?”

“It’d behoove me to tell the truth and shame the devil, Ma’am. Not that he and I are unacquainted.”

So that was a yes. 

The part about “keeping an eye” on you is tacked on rather reluctantly, but at the mention of camp, your brows raise. It was true, then. The tales you’d heard during your trips to Valentine, the new faces you’d noticed in corners and back alleys, they were all real.

There was a time when you thought you might be able to find your place sleeping under the stars, free to do as you wished and go where you pleased, so long as the law kept their greasy mitts to themselves. But circumstances had seen to it that your dream went unfulfilled. 

You muster up what you hope is a sympathetic smile, and Arthur takes it stiffly.

Even so, something else with his phrasing catches your attention.

“Hold on now, you said ‘started.’ There something else you’re not telling me?”

A hand, previously settled on his knee, finds its way to the back of his neck and rubs. 

“Uh, y’see,” he starts, looking damn near ready to wring his own neck, and you have to laugh, because what on God’s green earth could have Arthur Morgan this bothered? But instead of finishing his sentence, he turns his gaze toward the small sliver of moonlight coming in through the curtains and poses a question:

“You know anything about chickens?”

You blink.

“Arthur Morgan,” your eyes shut, and your mouth hangs open. “I work on a farm.“

“That you do.”

“And you’re asking me if I know about chickens?”

“That I am.”

He’s looking mighty sheepish; his hands return to their places on his knees and begin to tap again, with the added scrunch of a nose. You stifle a snort and oblige him.

“Yes, I’m well versed in chickens. Now tell me what the hell is up.”

And tell he did. Turns out, one of the eggs he’d snatched had somehow been fertilized, and hatched. Arthur, of all people, had been far too mortified to go and ask one of his own for help, so he’d spent the last two months slinking around to find out if his luck might earn him another to keep the one he already had some company. 

He’d named it and everything, so eating it (Marlene, he corrects gruffly) was completely off the table. By the time he’s finished his story, you’ve spent an exorbitant amount of energy fighting off several fits of laughter, and you’re fighting off your ninth when Arthur interrupts.

He leans forward, as if to confirm something, then settles himself back into his chair once he finds what he’s looking for. “You ain’t from around here, are you.” It’s a statement when it leaves Arthur’s mouth, not a question.

Observant. Observant, and deflective.

Chewing at the inside of your cheek, you pocket the uneasy feeling in your chest for later.

“Long story,” you offer. And a difficult one, at that. It wasn’t one you liked to revisit.

Arthur replies almost instantly. “Shoot.” For a moment his face pinches, like he’s dropped his last cent down a splinter-ridden nook he can’t reach. He deliberates, for a bit. But the money is long gone now. “Got a full audience right here,” he continues, a tad slower. “I’ve got…time. Why the hell not?”

There’s no smile, but there’s a genuine curiosity that creeps into his voice. It wafts over the crackling of the fire, blows fresh wind underneath wings long forgotten. 

This wasn’t good. Not one bit.

You cast a skeptical glance toward the bottle of whiskey on the table. It’d been set out on instinct when you’d let him in, a habit formed from a time long gone. Would Arthur want some, maybe? He seemed like the type. And you weren’t too pissed about the eggs now, anyways. So you wrap a blanket around yourself, stand, and turn to the cupboards to find a glass. But something stops you from making it over, and you instead choose to wrap a hand around the bottle and offer it to him.

If Arthur is as confused as you are, he doesn’t show it. He mutters a word of thanks as he takes the proffered bottle. But you don’t miss the way his eyes rake over your bare legs like hot coals. Or the slight twitch of his fingers—now free of their gloves—at the light brushing of your hand over his as you pass the bottle to him. 

You follow the bobbing of his throat for what feels like a lifetime as he takes down gulp after gulp. Amber liquid slips from the corner of his mouth; it catches the firelight on its trek down, and steals your air along with it when Arthur moves to wipe it away with the back of his hand.

It startles you, how quickly you’ve become accustomed to cataloging his movements. You’ve met him before, you’re almost certain of it now. If not in the fields here, then maybe somewhere in Valentine, or the woods. But somewhere. He felt too familiar to be new, too invigorating. A part of you wants to pinch yourself for giving in so easily. Maybe…maybe the folks in town had been right? Maybe Arthur Morgan was possessed? It was either that, or you were an idiot. You sincerely hoped it was the former.

The sound of the glass bottle hitting the table is what snaps you out of your trance. Blinking rapidly, you chance a peek at his eyes again, only to find them peeking right back. You do your best not to turn away. That thing you’d seen lurking out on the front porch is still there, submerged in the depths of his pupils. Still waiting.

You pull the top off of the bottle, take a quick swig, and return to your chair with an inhale and newfound resolve in tow.

Blabbering seems to come unfortunately easy with Arthur. He sits, silent and attentive throughout the entire retelling—save for the occasional grunt of approval, disapproval, whichever was appropriate. You tell him of your mother, young and hungry, and how she’d made herself available to the highest bidder—your father. Some wealthy businessman from God knows where. Twenty years your mother’s senior, it’d been no secret what exactly he’d gotten out of their short-lived union: a wild young thing to look after his progeny and keep his bed warm.

He was nice enough, for a time. Or at least nice enough for your mother to be able to tolerate. But something had sent her fleeing from that big, big house. She’d kept you in her arms and her heart till you’d found somewhat of a safe haven in the Grizzly Mountains.

“Safe” had been a bit of a stretch, though. Anyone with half a brain knew exactly what the Grizzlies were like. Arthur agreed. But your mother had been raised there, just as you would be, if only for a little while. You’re only able to remember a short split of time—just before your mother passed, and before your father had come to take you away from her. 

By then your mother had already taught you most of what you’d needed to survive: reading, writing, hunting, flattery, the works. The only thing she’d left out was how to survive without her. 

Your father had come to find you only a few days after, bearing news of his intentions to turn you into a “proper lady.” He made no mention of your mother or where she’d been buried. 

Polite society hadn’t taken too kindly to a daughter hailing from unsavory origins, and it was safe to say that you hadn’t taken too kindly to polite society either. So, you’d spent the last decade or so making your father’s life a living hell and warding off any potential suitors.

But it became clear stunt after outrageous stunt that he had no intention of cutting ties. Rather than cutting you off, he’d settled for the next best thing: manual labor. Your father was old friends (though “friends” was a bit dubious) with the Campbells, and deemed it an appropriate enough punishment for your wrongdoings. He’d relied on your aptitude for hunting to pawn you off on them, and with the help of some expertly feigned resistance, you’d gotten him to plant you exactly where you’d wanted to be. 

Away, and alone.

“Threw a wrench in my plans, but…life here has been peaceful, I reckon.” You pick at the beds of your fingernails, head bowed. 

Peaceful. 

Peaceful and quiet, save for the occasional moo. 

Though, now that you thought about it, you’d have to tally it up to several wrenches if you counted the hitmen. But you could open that barrel of horse shit later.

The creaking of wood alerts you to a shift in Arthur’s positioning, and his voice barrels down at you from the ceiling; he must be looking up. 

“You don’t seem all too ‘at peace,’ if you ask me.”

“I ain’t ask you.”

“Tuh.”

The two of you fall into yet another bubble of silence. It’s comfortable enough, though still laced with the slightest bit of awkwardness. 

You couldn’t get a read on Arthur. Just about every decision he’d made tonight—or told you he’d made—had been a contradiction. It didn’t make a lick of sense. But now that you’ve had more time to ruminate, it didn’t seem like it made much sense to him, either. His body language divulges as much. 

The quiet agitates you, now. Itches. You need to know more. Understand more. But you can’t do that without retracting your fangs and reigning in your apprehension. Finger beds picked raw, you test the waters.

“Not at peace, hm?” You mutter. “…How you figure?”

You hear him shrug. “Dunno.”

Silence.

You wait for him to continue, but it’s not until you look up at him that you realize he’s been waiting for you to look back. Arthur’s voice cuts through the silence once you can meet his eyes without squirming.

“Met enough people to know who’s livin’, and who ain’t.” He crosses an ankle over his knee, and gives an exhale when he puts his hands behind his head. “I’m in no place to be dealing out life advice, but you seem awfully dead, Miss.” 

“Ma’am,” you correct. 

Arthur makes a face, and you bark out a laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all. Some stranger he was, telling you off like this.

Your eyes crinkle, smile working its way from the inside out. “Takes one to know one, I assume?”

He blinks at you. “Yeah. Yeah, somethin’ like that, I suppose.”

More silence. 

“Do you think—”

“I ought to be heading out, now.” The dream is cut short. Arthur is standing suddenly, intercepting before you have the chance to say something incredibly, incredibly stupid. He tugs on his coat, fingers closing the buttons with frightening efficiency before he gathers up his gun and whatever else he’s brought with him and heads for the door.  

You're scrambling up out of your chair before your brain has a chance to process.“Arthur,” you say, half to him and half to the floor, “Arthur, wait a damn minute!” 

The spurs on his boots cease in their clinking. He’s got one hand wrapped around the doorknob, squeaky and now half-turned.

“…Got business to take care of.”

“At three in the morning?”

He glances at the small pocket watch you’d left open on the table. “Half past four, actually.”

“Didn’t realize you could tell time.”

He hums.

And Arthur stares at you for a moment, unabashedly. It’s unreadable at first. But then scars are shifting, and he’s leveling you with a look so bitter that it nearly has you reaching for your rifle again.

“Goodbye, Ma’am.” Arthur waves a noncommittal hand at your feet as he turns the knob. “And…go and see about those feet of yours, will you?”

He sweeps out the door.

He’s left it open.

It’s only after the faint sound of hoofbeats is nothing more than a whisper that you realize he isn’t in the cabin anymore. But somewhere between the shutting of the door and the hanging of your rifle, the faint impression of his parting words is pressed into your palm.

You look down, a bright sting and the sight of red specks on the floorboards making themselves known rather insistently. 

“Oh.”

—

next chapter >>

[sir-walton-goggins]

Fanfic Masterpost

(updated on September 28th 2024)

my ao3 account: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirwaltongoggins

Red Dead Redemption 2 works:

The Golden Prison (Arthur Morgan x oc)

The Ties That Bind Us (Arthur Morgan x oc)

Clean Shaven (Arthur Morgan x reader)

A Quiet Time (Arthur Morgan x reader)

All That Matters (Arthur Morgan x oc)

Of Thorns And Roses (Arthur Morgan x reader)

At Your Mercy (Arthur Morgan x reader)

Make Me Feel Human (Arthur Morgan x reader)

Kiss Of Purple, Blue And Green (Arthur Morgan x reader)

Pearl In Unworthy Hands (Molly O' Shea x reader)

Resident Evil works:

Fiery Red (Ada Wong x reader)

Lipstick Stains (Ada Wong x reader)

Evil Angel (Leon Kennedy/reader)

The Master Of Unlocking (My Heart) (Jill Valentine x reader)

[pinep-ne]

most of all, though, he wishes for nothing.

excerpts from a fic i .deleted.

[likesomeoneinlovee]

𝐀 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐭𝐡 | 𝐀𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐮𝐫 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐧 𝐱 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫

[ Quick !Colter Arthur fic because I restarted my game and I’m on chapter 1 again ;) ] Summary: You and Arthur had just got back from a hunting trip in the harsh weather and decided there might just be a better way to warm up than a fire. Warnings: NSFW, Quickie, PIV sex, aggressive sex (?), no proof read, female reader.

— Damn the cold, damn this new camp. Colter felt like hell on earth if hell had froze over, even in the run-down houses still left in the old mining camp the cold air was blistering. You and Arthur stood just outside one of the house’s log frame with your backs against it. The two of you kept your cigarettes between your lips, puffing on them as you smoked together. You and Arthur had been hunting for some deer for Pearson so no one would be left hungry as well as cold, those two didn’t mix well.

Your foot tapped against the snow as you took the cigarette between your fingers. “You’d think it’s the dead of winter when it’s meant to be spring.” You spoke so the gusts of wind drove by the blizzard wouldn’t be the only sound against the silence.  

“That’s what we get for goin’ up the mountains. Damnit.” He complained, rightfully so. After Blackwater it was the gang’s only choice I suppose, and finding a place not already swarming with people who we’d have to kill just for a place to live, now that was a damn near blessing. If you could even believe in those anymore. Your thoughts were quickly cut off by his words.

“I’d do anything for some goddamn warmth.” 

Oh, now he’d do anything. You’d quickly push the idea out of your head before it could fully form, he was your friend anyway, definitely not your lover.

But then again what’s so wrong with a quick fuck to get warmed up? 

Dutch and Hosea were currently inside the cabin you two were leaned against starting a fire. Though it seemed like a simple quick task that could be done quickly by them, your body ached for warmth, you wouldn’t dare to wait that long. Waiting felt like an absurdity to you and you were beginning to realize why, maybe your body didn’t ache for the comfortable warmth of a fire, maybe it was just dying to get it’s hands on Arthur—

He inhaled his cigarette one last time, savoring the tase of burning tobacco before flicking it into the snow onto the ground. His muscles tense from the cold. He could see your eyes burning into the side of his head, tracing his jawline, he huffed before turning to face you. “You ain’t waitin’ for that fire either, are ya?” 

He read you like an open book, or maybe that wasn’t it. He could’ve been thinking the same as you this entire time. 

That was the truth of it. 

“No, I ain’t, Morgan.” You let the words slip out, of course just thinking about the bulk of his muscles against you could warm you up all in itself. The heavy breaths coming from his parted lips told you enough. He pushed himself from the wall to stand in-front of you, his large hands now on your shoulders, guiding you so your back could press tighter against the cabin, leaving no room between. It was too easy to go so unspoken, as if you two had been waiting for any excuse to do this that it only took few words to convince each other. Guess now that turned into a fact. “You’re gonna let me touch you?” 

“Am I-“ Your words caught your throat before you could repeat his sentence, you couldn’t act like how you felt before you yelp a quick and excited ‘Yes!’ at his whisper. “For a minute.” Your voice a tad muffled by the cigarette hanging from your plump lips, tinted red from the cold, along with your cheeks. His hands slipped to your forearms, pressing himself against you. He threw his hat off into the snow, frustrated it was getting in the way as he tried to press your foreheads together, discarding just like his cigarette. The tips of your noses brushing against each other. “Christ you’re warm.” 

He’d move one of his hands to take the cigarette from your lips before it could burn his chin, he already had enough scars there. Your eyes completely fixed on his lips with no excuse, feeling his breath fan your face, silently praying that no one would come around the corner.

“Shit, y’know I just lit that? You said regarding your cigarette, this was hit with a quick, nearly harsh “I don’t care.” from him. He couldn’t stand the cold anymore. Taking you into a deep, open-mouthed kiss, his tongue quickly pushing into your mouth. It was like a war on your body had now begun; his hips snapped against yours once before ripping his lips from yours with a deep growl ripping from his throat, he quickly grew needy, bunching up your layers of skirt before his hands quickly moved to pick you up. Your thighs instinctively wrapped tight around his waist as he pressed you against that same wall. He moved one of his hands down where his belt would be if his goddamn coat weren’t so long, his face pressed against your shoulder as he tried to work around it.

“Fuck.” He’d grunt, his fingers working at the belt once found, with gloved hands this was even more frustratingly difficult on his part, but as he did always, he managed to undo it, tugging his pants down to his thighs. You on the other hand were less patient, your hand has been under your skirt, and instead of taking off your panties you had ripped them completely, Arthur noticed when you threw the torn piece of lace onto the matching white snow. 

He’d guide himself under your skirt, his hand wrapped around his cock as he circled your sopping cunt with his head, surprised to say the least when he felt how soaked you were in such a short amount of time, now he’d wonder what you were thinking about to get you like this. He wouldn’t vocalize what he was thinking, instead focusing on doing this quick and fast. In and out.

He took his first thrust into you, stretching you to fit around his thick shaft. Though it put you into pure ecstasy. You knew better not to be loud, the thudding of your back hitting the log wall with every pound into your pussy was enough to peak someone’s curiosity. Your hand was tight over your mouth to suppress your moans. Arthur not wearing his hat gave you a perfect excuse to tangle your fingers in his sandy locks, tugging at them almost to silently say ‘Hurry up.’

Though you’d prefer this to last, you’d know every single one of his delicious, deep thrusts will only live on in your head for the next century. His pace got even rougher, more sloppy than before as he pumped himself faster. Pulling all the way out just to slam his cock back in. 

“Goddamn you’re tight, princess- fuckin’ makin’ me lose control.” He’d rasp right into your ear. His words broke you down into even more of a shaking mess than you were. The combination of his words and his tip hitting your g-spot over, and over, and over again sent you over the edge, your cunt clenched around him, now he didn’t want you to alert nobody, of course. His mouth took yours into — once again — a deep, messy kiss, feeling your moan vibrate down his throat. He’d grip your thigh with one hand, keeping you against the wall as he used his other to help himself out of you, spitting into his palm to add extra slickness to his already cum-covered cock, tightening his grip around it to mimic your pussy, though he couldn’t get it that right. With a few more pumps from his hand he’d cum over his fist, with a low drawn out “Fuccccckkkkk…” 

You marveled at the sight, seeing Morgan’s O-face wasn’t something you could ever imagine not even in your sick mind, seeing his eyebrows furrowed together as his jaw slacked, it was something else to say the least. Your words were stolen from you after everything that had happen, somehow now hot even standing in the cold snow with your skirt hitched around your hips.

When you heard the door creek open in the distance you two hastily got yourself out of that position, adjusting your coats as you quickly tugged your layered skirt down to your boots once again. A small pant almost of relief came from you as you saw it was Dutch leaving the cabin, of course he walked straight, if he’d only have turned a bit he could’ve saw the sight of you and Arthur standing there with flushed faces, various things scattered the snow around you — including your panties.

You picked the ripped fabric off of the ground, still a bit shocked it had even come to this. “This might’ve been my only pair.” The silence was broken by your words, at the least you got a weak chuckle from Arthur, your cheeks flushing at the sound. You two were completely spent.

Later into the night you two were actually in the cabin this time; sitting in two separate chairs by the now lit fireplace, Arthur smoked as your hands reached in front of you to feel the warmth. The fire casting a warm light over the both of you in the otherwise dark cabin. 

“You know, that was nice.” That may have been the first you had mentioned the events from hours ago since. His eyes flicked towards you, a smirk tugged at his lips. 

“You’re a beautiful girl.” He’d reply, flattering, very much. “It’s gettin’ late. ‘Stead of walkin’ to the girl’s cabin why don’t you just stay in my bed.” He offered, and that offer you couldn’t refuse.

“I’d like that.” You’d smile at him, the both of you getting up as his took your hand into his leading you to his small bedroom.

And as you could — probably — imagine, you two didn’t exactly sleep that night. The creeks and whines of Arthur’s cot that could be heard from the other rooms told anyone with ears that.

[08melancholie]

Lessen your Stress. — Dutch Van der Linde/Micah Bell/Reader

tags: Post-Chapter 6: Beaver Hollow (Red Dead Redemption 2), Smut, Shameless Smut, Porn, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M, Sex, Spoilers, dont read if you havent finished chapter 6, theres spoilers to it that youll regret, Rough Sex, Vaginal Sex, Oral Sex, Penis In Vagina Sex, Anal Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Orgasm, Multiple Orgasms, Mildly Dubious Consent, Abuse of Authority, Authority Figures, Double Penetration, Double Penetration in Two Holes, Hand Jobs, Blow Jobs, Spit as Lube, Lube, Come as Lube, precum still counts i hope, Not Beta Read, no beta we die like micah bell

summary: What's one way to relieve the stress of losing your family, friends and entire gang you spent decades building? Dutch assumes it's getting his best friend to fuck his other still-devoted follower with him. It's another power trip of his you will never refuse.

a/n: initially the idea was reader and micah both trying to fight over dutch but then i was like why do we have to fightttt just let them both ruin users guts..... so here we are now. disclaimer: ive literally never written a threesome, i dont know what im doing honestly.... thank you to that one user on here who inspired this.

this is my longest fic up to date... yeah okay lets go touch grass.

words: 5,043 | AO3 LINK

A heap of shouting, spilling of secrets and killing later, the three of you regroup, all alone. Death is haunting you; you almost feel their blood on your hands, for some reason. You can't pinpoint why, but you feel guilty. Might be the fact you're still following Dutch, after he got them all killed.

Dutch might have officially lost his mind, right? You sometimes really wonder how he's made it this far, with such a good gang. Well, until now anyways. It's not until now that you notice a small flip in his head; a switch turning on for the first time. He's sat across from you, only a small fire between yourselves that lights up a small fraction of the area around you; up on a mountain, a small indent into the rocks it's built of serving as a cave of sorts. You're on the other side of the fire, laying down and watching Dutch really think for the first time, in a while. Your head is supported with the satchel you carry around your torso, visibly more uncomfortable than the plush pillows inside your old tent, now left behind. Sat behind you both is none other than Micah; staying forever loyal to the black-haired man lost in his own thoughts, his own pondering whilst his eyes illuminate the fire between your bodies. Micah is quiet; in fact, everyone is. Nobody dares say a word—not you, not Micah, especially not Dutch. Dutch doesn't feel grief, oh no; that isn't what this can be. You'd think that leaving two of your sons to die even after having the choice to save them both would make a man go crazy, but Dutch is clearly too far gone for that.

The fire crackles again, and you can't stand the silence any longer, opening your mouth to speak up. "We'll be fine, Dutch. Don't stress so much."

His head perks up from the fire, the flame-ridden irises of his catch your own. "Fine?" He repeats after your reassurance—not sounding all that reassured. You swallow and nod, always feeling so small under that dark gaze of his. "I would love to have even an ounce of your optimism." He barks, and you sink even lower. Well, it was a good try, if nothing.

He and Micah share a look, and it all goes quiet again. Fire crackles; animals howl in the distance; shrubbery whistles under the small wind blowing through the area. And all is quiet.

It seems as you'll be spending the rest of the night in here, so you decide to rest your exhausted body for today. You toss over and get as comfortably as one can, making an attempt at sleeping off the sour mood and thick tension in the air.

Your slumber only lasts you a few mere hours, both the very early morning sun picking at your eyes and gloved hands on your bare skin breaking you away from the little sleep you managed yourself. You grumble, turning to lay on your back. "Get'cho ass up," Micah, standing over you, takes a step back and moves his hands off you, the leather material slipping away from your waist. You sit up and rub your knuckles into your eyes, taking your satchel from underneath where your head was and standing up. "hoping you enjoyed Colter, darlin'." Oh, Colter; if hell was an icy, snowy blizzard, you'd assume they were talking about that part of West Grizzlies.

"Don't tell me we're going back." You hold off on groaning—only briefly as Micah nods and you can't help yourself, not at all fond of going back there again. "Why West Grizzlies, anyways?" You ask, watching him kick at the burnt-out campfire from last night.

Micah stomps out the ashy, black logs, turning back over to you with a shrug. "Dutch says so." Of course he does.

You hold back on rolling your eyes. "He at least in a better mood than yesterday?" You ask, very much still remembering his bite back to your simple attempt at making the situation you three were currently in a little more bearable. Micah starts walking off while talking to you, and you follow close behind, leaving the makeshift cave.

"Wouldn't put ma' money on it," He responds, voice getting quieter the closer he leads you towards Dutch—smoking a cigar, per the usual—and your three horses. "don't test yer luck, hm?" He gives a low chuckle, and you just sigh. Snow; low temperatures; blizzards; all things you wanted to leave and forget in Colter. But, here you were.

Dutch gives an acknowledging nod to both of you, which you swiftly return. "We ready to go, then?" Micah gives him another nod, and walks up to Baylock. You follow to your own horse, petting it briefly before getting up onto the saddle, mounting up as the two of them soon do the same.

The three of you start the long journey back up towards the mountains; almost feeling that familiar deja-vu-feeling kicking in.

The ride is long and definitely not friendly; the moment your horses get you to the snow, the wind picks up and so does the snow, plowing down on all six of you. It's almost unbearably annoying, having to ride with one hand on your reins and one covering the top of your eyebrows to block out the snow from your vision. It's only a long while later that the three of you get up on the snow-covered mountain of your liking, finding an abandoned area with a cabin, definitely big enough for the three of you, for now.

The three of you hitch your horses safely into a small stable-like area, making sure they wouldn't be cold in their spots. Afterwards, one after another, you enter the cabin and inspect it; it's a medium-sized hut-type room, a few cots still stable enough to sleep in and a kitchen on the other side, most cabinets left open and empty. Mere minutes of searching left you with a few cans of fruit and vegetables, but between you three, hunting will definitely be a must for nourishment. At least theres a run-down fireplace you can use to warm up your shivering bodies. Dutch sends Micah to get firewood, instructing you to work with him and make the place look a bit less messy. And, three of you get to work.

It isn't exactly homey, but it'll do. Can't be picky now, can you? You had a home, and it was Dutch's own fault everything at 'home' went to shit.

It's been about a week since, and you've gotten used to the spot you three settled into, you could even start calling it home. Well, no—nothing will ever replace the home that the gang provided, but that's something you'll have to simply cope with. You're still following Dutch, so really, do you miss them that much? Your trail of thought is broken up by the sound of the creaky cabin door opening, raising the volume of the small blizzard going on outside briefly.

Dutch and Micah enter after another, closing the door of the small cabin and blocking out the sound of wind outside. Your head perks up from the small book you were examining at the sound, and you nod in greeting. "Hey," Your gaze goes back to the book until Dutch clicks his tongue at you.

"Eyes up here."

You don't take even a second to comply, meeting his eyes but occasionally drifting them to Micah. You're slightly confused, they're acting odd. "You need something, Dutch?"

"Stand up."

Every command sends a small shiver to your spine, that much is sure. You place the book down and rise from your seat on the creaky cot, taking a step towards them to stand before the two men. Your compliance and submissiveness always sends one side of Dutch's mouth up slightly. "Got a.. proposition for you. Well... Not exactly, anyways." Micah matches Dutch's dark chuckle after the leader speaks up again, both looking down at you. "Listen now, it's been pretty cold, hasn't it, my dear?" As Dutch speaks to you, your eyes stay glued on him; but you can see Micah taking slow steps away from the leader, and around you. You focus on Dutch again, nodding. "That's what we thought. You see," He then takes a step closer to you, gloved hands clasping together in front of you. "we can keep ourselves warm without wasting so much firewood." At Dutch's words, you can definitely feel Micah so much closer to you, from behind your back. You're starting to feel something bubble in your abdomen; was it nervousness, anxiety? Lust, arousal? You couldn't exactly tell.

"Tell me, my dear," Another two steps; one in front of you, one behind you. You feel like you're being circled by sharks in an ocean, hunters on prey, making you feel small again. "you're a smart girl; you do know what I mean, don't you?" Oh, you do. You know it all too well as you've imagined it one too many times—late at night in your tent, your hands on yourself underneath the blanket, muffling the moans of their names into your palm—so it's not an unfamiliar feeling. Your words seem to only fail you further the more he speaks, so you just nod again. His moustache follows the curve of his lips when that devilish smirk arises again. "Thought so. Now..."

His gloves glide over your shoulders, leather on leather as he stands right in front of you now. "And surely, you wouldn't mind trying this new warm-up with us, would you?"

Like a cat playing with a mouse it's caught, toying with it until it breaks. Except, it's two big cats and one meek little mouse. A hot breath glides down to you, right over your shoulder when Micah draws himself closer, and you feel stuck in your spot between them—even more so when Micah places his gloved hands down to your sides, almost kneading at your waist. Now, how could you ever say no? It's Dutch Van der Linde and Micah Bell. For one, you've been imagining this scenario in the comfort of your tent, late into the many nights that turned very hot, very quickly. But also, do you really have a choice? Your boss; your leader, asking such a vulgar and intimate thing of you? What would he say if you refused? Would he let you refuse? Is this all another power-trip he'll hold over your head?

No time for questions when Micah squeezes your waist to bring you back to reality. "He asked 'ya a question, doll." He purrs—its low and sultry, right next to your ear, accompanied by another knead to your body. You feel almost lightheaded by your current situation. Your hands have been unconsciously balled-up, digging into your trousers in an attempt to ground yourself. "C'mon, answer the man." And all you can manage is a nod, again. A moan would probably leave your mouth if you opened it, which.. would also be an answer. Your nod was really all it took, a silent consent more than enough for Micah's hands to travel to your hips and for Dutch's to find the sides of your neck.

"Good girl, always listening to me like this. I know you wouldn't disobey."

The feeling is indescribable, really—Micah touches you with urgency and carelessness, almost selfishly and greedily; his hands map out the contour of your body, almost as if trying to mould your curves to his liking. Dutch, however, takes it hellishly slow; thumbs brush over the front of your neck while the tips of his other fingers dig into the sides, almost as if trying to coax you to relax into whatever they have planned for you. "Oh, she's good, boss." Whenever Micah speaks, it ends up right next to your ear, and you feel that familiar shiver down your spine. An agreeing chuckle leaves Dutch's mouth, which is very close to your face; your own lips. You're clueless as to what you have to do—should you stay stiff? Touch one of them? Say anything at all to their comments and wandering touches?

Dutch's slow pace slips up when he can't hold himself back from giving himself a taste of yourself, dipping his head down to latch onto your lips. It's nice and quick, and your hands find themselves creeping up his coat and resting on his shoulders, whereas his move under your jacket and place themselves on your ribs and under your chest. Micah is pressed right up to your back now, one hand leaves your hip to move your hair away from your neck, sliding your jacket collar down as he starts to pepper the side of your neck in kisses, occasionally sucking on the skin while pressing his hips to your backside—you can already feel him through both of your clothes. Dutch takes a moment to lick your lip, coaxing you to open your mouth up for him. You comply and your lips part an opening for Dutch's tongue, hands squeezing at his shoulders.

His tongue explores around your mouth with profound efficiency; with experience. It makes the feeling in your abdomen all the more prominent, and you slowly feel a heat rushing to it. Micah isn't any worse either, the mixture of his gentle kisses, rough sucks and sometimes licks up your neck all make you more worked up than you'd ever want to imagine. He's still pressed up to your rear, hands at the very top of your outer thighs, roughly handling you like previously. Then, Dutch starts unbuttoning your jacket. Slowly, each one gets undone, and your jackets pools between yours and Micah's boots, who carefully kicks it aside, just to continue marking up your neck. His stubble and beard occasionally brushes against your sensitive neck, making you let out little sounds into Dutch's mouth. Oh, how they're enjoying this.

Dutch momentarily breaks away from you, leaving you to finally breathe in. "You know, I always liked how you followed me so blindly," Dutch's hands move up and brush over your chest, then cup both of the muscles. "it was so damn hard to not take you right then and there, in camp." You gasp and sigh when his hands start massaging and fondling you. This much foreplay has never gotten you so worked up in your life, and you can definitely feel the dampness between your legs growing with each moment. Then, Micah's hands move. They're getting impatient, seen so by the man behind you who starts groping your rear, breathing oh-so-sweetly down your neck. "I'mma have my fun with'chu, sweet thin'." His hums have goosebumps running up your body. His hands squeeze your ass a final time before moving, sliding down onto your inner thighs. You almost think that he can tell how wet you are, from the low laugh he lets out into your neck.

Impatience really overtakes both of them when they break away and start stripping. Coats, vests, undershirts, trousers; all the many layers you need to survive the coldness of West Grizzlies. Once they're almost bare, left in their underpants, they walk to one of the cots and coax you to follow, taking a seat next to each other and gesturing for you to stand in front of them. "Your turn, my dear." Dutch commands, leaning back slightly.

"Make sure to give us a good show, darlin'." Micah adds, following Dutch and also leaning back. And a good show, they shall receive. You start with your undershirt, slowly and almost teasingly unbuttoning it, exposing yourself inch by inch, moment by moment. "Oh, she's good." Micah purrs to Dutch, looking at you intently and never breaking his eyes away from your body. Dutch gives an agreeing hum, nodding to the other mans' words as you move to your jeans, shrugging your undershirt off while undoing the restraints of your jeans. You slip them off and toss both clothing articles to your jacket, standing in only your garments, now only covering your chest and mound. Their eyes are still so predatory, it's almost killing you. Then, finally, Dutch gestures with his hand for you to move closer, and you step up right in front of them. They part slightly to the side, and Micah pats the space between them on the bed. You understand instantly and comply just as quickly, sitting between them now. "Attagirl... how'd 'ya train 'er to listen so well, boss?"

Neither of them say more, as Micah leans in to get his lips onto yours himself now, kissing you with speed and want; need. Dutch's hands go to your back, fiddling with your bra to get it off of you. Oh, but the best part is Micah's hands; one reaches down between your legs instantly, swiping across your slit over your undergarments. "Oh shit, 'yer this damn wet already?" Both men laugh in sync, dark and low chuckles filling the cabin. His fingers find your clit under the fabric and start rubbing, coaxing you to moan into his mouth which you do. He loves how your meek little gasps and whimpers echo down his throat, and he rubs faster. The other hand of his tangles itself in your hair, pulling you closer to deepen the kiss. Dutch finally undoes your bra clasps, working it off of you without disturbing Micah and his workings on you. Your bra is tossed elsewhere, and one of Dutch's hands instantly finds your chest, fondling one while latching his mouth onto the other. Your hands grip one shoulder of theirs each, nails digging into the skin as your moans vibrate into Micahs mouth, hips already twitching into his two fingers working your bundle of nerves perfectly. Micah only breaks himself off your lips for a brief moment, "Can't wait to see this pretty cunt stretch around me." his mouth is back on yours, and the sentence alone has you grinding into his two fingers. Where's your dignity now?

Dutch's lips kiss around your nipple, teeth graze and pull oh-so-perfectly, and you already feel like you're close. They handle you with very different paces and things in mind; Micah is clearly trying to humiliate, get you to cum for him as quick as he can to give his ego a boost. Dutch however, he's now teasing; torturously slow pace on both of your tits, yet it works you up just as well as Micah's finger and mouth. And both are equally as blissful.

"Think she's ready for us?" Micah slows his fingers down and moves away from your lips to Dutch's question.

"Oh, surely, see how she's try'na fuck herself on my fingers? Poor, little thing. Bet she wants more."

"Well," Dutch leans away from your chest, standing to get his undergarments off. It's not long before Micah follows, and you can barely look at them; nude as the days they were born, with two almost equally as big cocks twitching for you, some precum at both their tips. It's a sight. "reckon she knows what she has to do—" He turns from Micah to yourself. "—doesn't she?" You swallow. Call it practice for what's to come, literally.

You shuffle off of the bed, and your knees meet the wood floors. Their grins down at you leave your panties practically leaking your own arousal. Looking between them, unsure where to start, you choose the leader—obviously. You get on-level with his hips, placing your hands on his thighs. "Oh, now don't leave my partner out, my dear." Dutch takes one of your hands by the wrist, guiding it to Micah's lower abdomen. "Show us both some love, baby." You can barely breathe at this point, and your hands might even be trembling slightly. Now, you've given maybe one blowjob/handjob in your life; but both, at the same time? This is overwhelming. Nonetheless, can't disappoint your boss, now can you? You push your thoughts down and slide your hand around Micah's shaft, running your thumb over his precum-covered tip to slicken it slightly, while simultaneously licking a stripe up the underside of Dutch's cock, collecting the leaky substance for a taste. Their faces are full of arousal and pure bliss, they almost make you feel proud. Dutch raises a hand to run through your hair, tugging on it. "We're old, impatient men, my darlin'. Get to it."

You take half of Dutch in your mouth, and start pumping your hand up and down Micah, earning a few praising groans and another tug to your hair, trying to draw you closer. You take Dutch until he hits the back of your mouth, and you barely suppress gagging on him. Don't need to inflate his ego that much. You move and bob your head, saliva slickening Dutch's dick up and painting your lips, some gathering at the corners of your mouth. Your hand works Micah in a slightly faster pace, seeing as it's easier to pump your hand over his shaft than take one in your mouth—especially one Dutch's size. You're used to average men, so this might as well even be nice. Not so much when he'll be stretching you open, but we'll get to that problem later. You continue your demonstrations, getting both of them to groan and even chuckle sometimes, looking down at you. They always looked down at you, you knew so much—but only ever figuratively. Never literally.

It's not long before Dutch grabs your head and just fucks himself into your mouth at his pace, which makes it easier to focus on your hand that's working Micah. You increase the pace of your hand, occasionally teasing the tip to see it twitch before continuing. "Wouldn't be surprised if you was a whore before 'ya joined us, so good at this." Micah's comment should make you mad, but you're definitely more turned on than anything. "Keep working dem pretty fingers around me, 'm close." And you absolutely will.

Dutch, however, doesn't give you a warning like Micah; he suddenly cums down your throat with a groan, and you have to focus on not gagging all over his dick as it empties itself out into your mouth, and you swallow every drop like if it were holy water. Unfortunately, you're not given a breather when he withdraws his hips from your mouth, as Micah pulls your hand away from his cock and brings your closer to it, grasping your jaw and squeezing so that your lips part. "Open." You don't feel like being painted all over with his cum, so you comply instantly, and he jerks himself a few times before spilling into your mouth like Dutch, your hands finding his thighs to brace yourself.

"Damn, she's good." Dutch seats himself back on the cot with a small creak, palming himself—somehow still semi-hard. Micah lets go of your jaw after he's spent, and you can't stop yourself from coughing as you swallow practically every drop, only a few around your mouth still. Micah chuckles down at you before grabbing you by the sides, his hands grasping your waist as he brings you back to your feet. "Come on then, you ain't done yet, or are 'ya, babydoll?" You're guided over to Dutch, turned to face him as both men help position you over him to straddle the leader. Micah's hands are replaced by Dutch's ones, who immediately moves your panties off and guides your folds around his shaft to slicken himself up again. "Still practically dripping. Oh, you poor thing. We won't be selfish no longer, my dear, you shall get your own, too." His tip slides to your entrance, and you have to grasp his shoulders to keep yourself steady, your lips slightly parted in pleasure. Slowly, Dutch's tip presses into you, and you squeak out a moan as you feel that small stretch you were dreading. "I'll go slow, don't wanna split our new toy in half, do we darling?" Well, that's exactly how you're feeling, oddly enough.

You're gasping and moaning as every inch of his disappears into your slick walls, the lewd noises mixing with Dutch's small praise and breathy exhales as you sink down on his cock, feeling it twitch inside you a few times. "Good girl, taking all of me like that." He gives you a moment to adjust before lifting your hips up and slamming right back down, earning a strained moan out of you, nail indents marking his shoulders up as they dig into the flesh, which just makes him laugh. "Love how tight you are, like it's sucking me right in. Your cunt loves me stretching you out, huh." His hips slowly begin to slap against you, filling the cabin with the suggestive noises of skin-on-skin and moans.

As you finally get used to his size, you feel hands on your waist from behind. You almost forgot Micah was there, seeing how quiet he was being. Then, one hand trails down to your rear, and a thumb circles your anus. "Can't leave me out again, can 'ya?" His thumb slowly draws itself into you, and you have to bite down on Dutch's shoulder. Jesus, you did not expect them to try and fuck you at the exact same time, even less from behind. He briefly extracts his thumb to spit at your entrance, circle it and then stick it right back in, trying to loosen your muscles up for his—much fucking bigger, may you add—member. They find a similar pace, Dutch is rutting you down onto his dick while Micah's thumb stretches your other hole out, readying it for his cock which is already leaking in anticipation. You brace yourself when he moves his thumb out and spits again, this time on his own cock to moisten it up again, mixing the saliva with his precum. Then, his tip slaps against your ass a few times, before it slides to your opening. Dutch has slowed his thrusts down to let Micah get in as well, and you haven't stopped biting at his shoulder since you started, almost drooling around it. Even if it's only the tip, as soon as Micah eases it in, you shudder and gasp into Dutch's flesh, biting down harder as your asshole feels every little stretch it's getting from Micah's thick cock. Thankfully, it's sliding in somewhat-easily after a few moments, Dutch's hands squeezing your hips as he shushes you to relax you, and Micah's caressing your backside as he slowly sinks into you.

The first thrust is the worst, obviously. You almost immediately shiver when Micah slowly slips out of you, to the tip, before drawing his hips right against your ass again. Dutch coos into your ear to keep you collected as Micah gets you used to his size, kissing your slightly sweaty spine briefly. "Come on, 'ya can take me, girlie." He sinks his whole length into you, almost as breathless as you. Then, they slowly find a synced pace and fuck into you from both holes as you gasp against Dutch's shoulder and shudder into him. "We'll let'cha cum too, don't worry doll." Micah slides a hand over to your abdomen, and his thumb circles your clit once more. You're on cloud nine—hell, you've never been high, but it's probably similar to this feeling. Your holes are tight around their cocks, all three now audibly gasping and moaning in sync. It's possibly the lewdest trio you've ever heard. With how they're thrusting into you, you're reduced to a goddamn mess; gasping, moaning their names, your cunt and anus tightening and squeezing, your mouth open and tongue slightly sticking out—you look like a dog, almost. Their bitch, that's for sure. From now on, anyways. You don't see how this could ever be a one-time-thing.

You can feel your orgasm building again, and you've honestly been doing pretty well, all things considered. "Can't cum in that pretty cunt, but I can back here." Micah's comment runs goosebumps over your body, and you already dread the feeling of that. His breath brushes over your skin as he kisses up your back again, reaching the nape of your neck and grazing his teeth over it, all while his hips slam into your ass. Dutch is stroking your sides, his cock twitching even more inside you. He's close—Micah's close—you're close—you might all just come at the same time.

That's exactly how it goes down. You're first to hit your orgasm, one that causes you to squeeze around their cocks once more, which is enough for both of them to hit their peaks with you, Micah staying buried deep in your guts while Dutch pulls out and jerks himself dry over your mound and his stomach, gasping for air in sync with you. Micah draws his spent member out of your asshole slowly, some of his cum leaking out and down your thigh. He takes a breather on your back and hugs around your waist, heaving into your spine. Your body relaxes over Dutch's, who can barely hold all three of you up. It takes all three of you a moment of no movement to calm down from your highs, before Micah is first to move off your back and help you off Dutch, slowly seating you next to him. "Well, goddamn, princess. Dutch was right; 'ya didn't disappoint for even a moment." He hums, getting to the nightstand and tossing a rag over your stomach. He shuts the drawer and sits down next to you, cleaning Dutch's spent off of your stomach while you gather your thoughts, before wiping his shaft and tossing it over to Dutch.

"I'm sure you know we aren't leaving you be after that performance, my dear." Dutch adds as he wipes him self clean, and you just wordlessly nod, laying back slightly. "I guessed so." He chuckles, and Micah chimes in with his own breathy laugh, standing to walk over and grab everyone's clothes, giving them out to you and Dutch before starting to get dressed himself.

And you're damn sure you won't want to stop anytime soon either.

Kudos on AO3 appreciated, as always! This fic killed me omg its my longest one up to date and its got me in a chokehold. fuck i wanna be between them so bad.

[sallowsarchives]

Clash and Convergence

Part I | Part II | Part III

Pairing: Arthur Morgan x Fem!Reader Summary: Tensions are running high as you continue to grapple with your conflicting emotions. However, with another job thrusting you both back into close proximity, could this new development be the key to easing the tension and mending the rift between you once more? Word Count: 8.2k  Warnings/Tags: no use of y/n, angst, gunfights, injury, canon-typical danger, dead bodies (nothing too graphic), not proofread!! A/N: Hey again! Alright so compared to the last chapter, I've taken some creative liberties and sort of deviated from the canon for this one, so I’m hoping this one turns out good. Also, no smut for this part but I promise it’s coming in the next chapter, which I hope to finish as soon as I can. I hope you enjoy this chapter, and feedback is always appreciated!

Read on AO3

A few weeks had passed since that night, yet despite the passage of time, the unspoken tension between you and Arthur remained. 

In the first few days after the party, you withdrew into yourself, steering clear of the usual banter and small talk. You went about your tasks with mechanical precision, your movements efficient but devoid of the usual liveliness.

The memory of the events that occurred lingered in the back of your mind, casting a shadow over your usual routines. Your tried to bury those thoughts, focusing on the small, manageable tasks that kept your hands busy and your mind occupied.

Lately, the days had been filled with nothing but the usual activities—scouting for potential heists, tending to horses, helping with chores, and maintaining the camp.

Arthur was rarely at the camp, often off on some job Dutch had given him. Some days, you'd catch him heading to his horse early in the morning, riding out to God knows where and wouldn’t return for a few days. When he did, he'd usually arrive with freshly caught game or extra cash to contribute.

On the days he was gone, the camp felt a little quieter, a little less tense. His absences were a small blessing, giving you the space needed to collect your thoughts and maintain the fragile peace between you both. During those times, you could almost pretend that things were as they once were.

But on the days he was present, you both made a concerted effort to avoid each other. Conversations were brief and strained, and any interaction was kept to a bare minimum.

He often busied himself with tasks around the camp—chopping wood, organizing supplies, and carrying hay bales to the horses as if they weighed nothing.

When he wasn’t working, he’d sit by the campfire, engaging in small conversations with the others or scribbling in his journal. On some days, he’d spend the entirety of his time hidden away in his room.

You, on the other hand, would retreat to the outskirts of the camp until Miss Grimshaw scolded you, at which point you'd bury yourself in tasks of your own, your demeanor just as distant. 

You found solace in the routine of chores, focusing on the small, manageable tasks that allowed you to avoid any unnecessary interaction with Arthur. 

You missed the days when you'd head into town with the girls or accompany some of the men for small jobs where you’d use your nimble fingers to good use. Blending into the bustling crowds, you’d quietly lift wallets and purses from unsuspecting townsfolk, finding a strange satisfaction in the simplicity and thrill of the task. 

But lately, with the Pinkertons breathing down the gang's necks even more, there hadn’t been much in the way of work. The lack of action only heightened the tension, making the days drag on with a restless energy that seemed to seep into every part of your life.

Before long, the unease between you and Arthur became palpable to those around you. The camp was abuzz with quiet speculation, though the mood remained outwardly unaffected.

Conversations with the others were tinged with curiosity as they noticed the stark shift from the usual lively banter to the strained silence that now characterized your interactions. 

The frequent arguments and sharp exchanges had given way to a stifling quiet, and it didn’t take long for the gang members to sense that something was off between you two. The change in dynamic was unusual and unsettling, prompting whispered conversations and knowing glances among the camp.

One evening, as you were helping Pearson with the supplies, you overheard Javier and Bill talking by the fire. 

“Have you noticed how quiet it’s been without those two at each other’s throats?” Bill said, shaking his head.

Javier nodded, glancing discreetly over at you. “Yeah, it’s strange. Almost miss the excitement.”

Lenny and Karen, who had joined the group, shared their own takes. 

“It’s strange,” Lenny said. “I mean, they’d always bicker and fight, but there was some kind of spark to it. Now, it’s just… cold. A whole lot of nothin’.”

“You’d think they’d have worked it out after gettin’ the chance to spend time together. But it’s like whatever went down just left a permanent chill between ’em,” Karen added.

Pearson, catching the conversation, gave you a look but said nothing. You simply shrugged and continued with your task, trying to ignore the growing weight of the situation.

Though the camp had noticed the shift between the two of you, no one had really confronted you about it—except for one person. 

Hosea, ever the keen observer, had picked up on the change in demeanor from you and Arthur during the ride back after the party. 

That night, as soon as you arrived at camp, you dismounted the coach before anyone even had a chance to offer a greeting and headed straight into the house without a word. 

The usual warmth of the campfire and the lively chatter that greeted the return of its members felt distant and muted to you, a stark contrast to the storm of emotions churning inside. 

Arthur had watched you storm off with a mix of frustration and concern, feeling a pang of guilt but too wrapped up in his own stubborn pride to approach you. His internal conflict was evident, as he struggled with his own emotions while grappling with the distance growing between you both. 

The weight of his own pride and the fear of further complicating things kept him from reaching out. He knew he was part of the issue, yet he couldn’t bring himself to make things right, leaving him brooding by the fire long after you had disappeared into the house.

Hosea didn’t miss the tension in the air as you left abruptly or the way Arthur’s mood had darkened. He watched Arthur’s restless movements, the firelight dancing over his face and revealing a rare glimpse of vulnerability and frustration. The usual calm and quiet confidence Arthur exuded was replaced by visible agitation, a stark contrast to the man Hosea had come to know.

At first, Hosea hadn’t thought much of it, assuming it was just another round of the aftermath from the usual quips and disagreements between you and Arthur. But as weeks went by and the tension persisted, he began to sense that something deeper was at play.

Fast forward to now, as you were engrossed in cleaning a rifle— which Hosea had actually gifted you after witnessing your impressive marksmanship on a hunt you had accompanied him on—you caught sight of him approaching out of the corner of your eye. 

"Mind if I join you?" he asked gently, settling himself on a nearby log. His tone was casual but his eyes held a deep concern. "I've been meaning to check in, see how you're doin' after the party."

You nodded, not trusting yourself to speak without betraying the turmoil inside. Hosea sat down beside you, watching as you continued to clean the rifle, the rhythmic motion of your hands almost mechanical.

He hesitated for a moment before speaking, his voice soft and careful. "I, uh, noticed you’ve seemed a bit... off since that night. You've been keepin' to yourself more, and there's not as much of that fiery spirit you usually show. I don't mean to pry, but, well, I reckon somethin' happened, didn't it?"

You looked up, meeting his gaze. There was no judgment in his eyes, only an open, sympathetic understanding. Sighing, you tried to find the right words. 

“Arthur and I just had a… disagreement. Nothing that hasn’t happened before.”

“Disagreements are one thing, but this feels different,” Hosea said, his voice carrying a hint of concern. “I’ve seen you two go at it before, but there’s a coldness now that wasn’t there before. Something’s weighing heavy on both of you. You want to talk about it?”

You shrugged, trying to keep your tone nonchalant. “It’s really not that big of a deal, Hosea. Just a rough patch, like always.”

Hosea’s brows furrowed slightly, but he didn’t push further. 

“Alright. Just don’t let it fester. If you need to talk, you know where to find me.”

You nodded, giving him a tight smile. “Thanks, Hosea. I appreciate the concern, but I’m fine. Just need to keep busy.”

With that, you turned your attention back to the rifle, the rhythmic motion of your cleaning a soothing distraction from the thoughts clouding your mind. Hosea left you to your task, though his concerned gaze lingered a moment longer before he walked away, leaving you with your uneasy thoughts.

You knew his concern was genuine, but you were determined to keep things at a distance and focus on moving forward, despite the emotional undercurrents swirling beneath the surface.

You took a deep breath, letting the familiarity of the rifle and the routine of your task provide a semblance of control amid the chaos of your feelings.

Later that evening, as the campfire crackled and cast flickering shadows around the camp, you sat with Abigail, the two of you enjoying a rare moment of light conversation.

The warmth of the fire was a welcome contrast to the chill in the night air, and Javier’s gentle guitar strumming in the background added a soothing ambiance to the evening, offering a brief respite from the weight of your thoughts.

As you and Abigail chatted, enjoying the peaceful atmosphere, the quiet rustling of footsteps and the gentle clearing of a throat drew your attention. Turning around, you saw Arthur standing there, his expression guarded yet earnest.

Arthur had arrived at camp some time in the afternoon, his presence marked by the familiar rhythm of his horse’s hooves and the clink of his spurs as he carried in another fresh load of game. His arrival had been met with the usual nods and grunts of acknowledgment, but he had kept to himself since then.

Arthur’s presence seemed to amplify the quiet of the evening, his stance betraying an unease that matched the tension between you two. The firelight cast shifting shadows on his face, revealing the weariness and frustration etched into his features. 

“Evenin’,” he said, his voice rough but steady. “Uh, Dutch needs to talk to us both.”

Arthur shifted his weight, his gaze flickering to the side before meeting yours again. “He uh… said he wanted to talk to us about something,” he added, his tone attempting to be casual but betraying a hint of the underlying strain.

You took a deep breath, trying to steady yourself against the rising unease about what Dutch might need to discuss. Abigail, noticing the awkwardness in Arthur’s demeanor, chose not to comment. Instead, she offered a sympathetic smile and stood up, her gesture a small comfort in the tense moment.

“I’ll catch up with you later,” she said softly, giving your shoulder a reassuring pat before heading off to give you and Arthur some space.

As you watched her walk away, you felt a brief flicker of gratitude for her understanding. You turned back to Arthur, who was still standing silently, his gaze shifting uncomfortably, before making your way towards Dutch’s quarters. 

Arthur’s footsteps were heavy behind you, his usual easy stride replaced by a more deliberate, uncertain pace. He cleared his throat, as if to break the silence, but no words came.

The crackling of the campfire and the soft murmur of distant conversations slowly faded, leaving only the sound of the wooden floorboards creaking under your steps as you both made your way inside the house and up the stairs.

You raised your hand and knocked on the door, the sound echoing louder than you expected. After a moment, Dutch’s voice called out from inside, inviting you both in. With a deep breath, you turned the handle and stepped into the room, ready to face whatever Dutch had to say.

Upon entering, you found Dutch and Hosea on the terrace, engaged in a low conversation. The evening light cast a warm glow over them, adding a sense of calm to the otherwise tense atmosphere. Dutch looked up as you approached, a smile etching onto his face.

"Ah, there you are, come on out, we’ve got some things to discuss."

Hosea gave you a nod of acknowledgment, his expression one of quiet understanding. 

Dutch gestured for you and Arthur to join them at a small table set up with a few maps. 

“I wanted to go over a few things with you both,” Dutch said, his tone casual but authoritative. “Hosea and I have been discussin’ a plan, might just be what we need to get away from here and finally throw the Pinkertons off our scent for good.”

Hosea turned to you, adding to Dutch’s explanation. “There’s another job, particularly concerning the stagecoach details you picked up from the party, actually. You know, the one rumored to be packed with jewels and cash. We’ve gotten word that it’ll be rollin’ through just north of Lemoyne, somewhere in New Hanover, tomorrow.”

You felt a jolt of realization as Hosea’s words hit you. The mention of the stagecoach, packed with jewels and cash, immediately brought back the details you’d nearly forgotten in the whirlwind of recent events. 

Your mind raced, piecing together the fragments of information you’d gathered during the party. This was the opportunity that could turn everything around, but it also meant diving right back into the chaos. You could sense the weight of the mission ahead, the stakes higher than ever.

You nodded slowly, absorbing the gravity of the situation. “Alright, so what’s the plan?” you asked, trying to focus on the task at hand despite the whirlwind of emotions.

Hosea glanced at Dutch, who took over the explanation. “We’ve got a basic outline. We reckon the stagecoach will be guarded, so you’ll need to stay sharp. Essentially, your task is to take out the guards and haul that coach right back here for safekeeping,” he said, pointing to a spot on the map.

Arthur leaned in, his expression serious. “Sounds like a plan. Who else is comin’ with us?”

Dutch and Hosea exchanged a glance, then Dutch answered, “It’ll just be the two of you. We’re countin’ on you to get it done.”

You blinked, eyes widening as you begin to feel a surge of frustration. “Wait, what? You can’t be serious,” you said, your voice tinged with disbelief.

Arthur's eyes widened slightly, his unease becoming more evident. “Just the two of us?” he repeated, trying to mask his discomfort with a gruff tone. He looked between Dutch and Hosea, clearly taken aback by the lack of backup.

Dutch looked momentarily taken aback by your reactions, his brow furrowing in confusion. “What’s the problem?” he asked, clearly oblivious to the underlying tension between you and Arthur. “I figured you two would be the best for this. It’s a straightforward job. I know you can handle it. You seemed to do fine back at the mayor's party.”

Arthur fidgeted with his hat, looking uncomfortable. He glanced at you, his face showing a mix of frustration and reluctance.

Hosea, sensing the growing discomfort and understanding the gravity of the situation, stepped in. “Since you were the one who uncovered the details about the stagecoach,” he said, addressing you directly, “We figured you’d lead this one. You know the specifics and what to expect. Arthur here is our best bet to go with you, handle any trouble, and watch your back while you’re at it.”

“And besides,” Hosea continued, his tone softening, “I know you’ve been itching to get out of camp and put your skills to use. This job could be a good chance for you to get out of the camp for a bit and do something you’ve been craving.”

Oh you had been hoping for a change of scenery, but not the kind that would throw you right back into close quarters with Arthur. 

This is just fantastic… Just what you needed, no? You couldn’t make this up if you tried. Here you were, thinking you’d get a breather from the endless tension, only to find yourself on a direct collision course with it. Really, the universe must have a twisted sense of humor.

Arthur’s dry laugh cut through your thoughts, and you glanced at him, noting the mix of annoyance and amusement on his face. Yeah, he’s probably thinking the same thing. Didn’t expect this to come with a side of enforced teamwork. We’ve barely been able to keep it together when we're in camp. Now we’re supposed to be a seamless duo out there?

Before you or Arthur could voice any further objections, Dutch cuts in with a firm tone. “It’s settled. You two will handle this job together, and that’s final. No more complaints or arguments.”

The finality in his voice left no room for negotiation. 

Arthur let out a deep frustrated sigh. “Well, ain’t this just perfect,” he grumbled, his voice dripping with sarcasm. You shot him a resigned glance, both of you silently acknowledging the irony of the situation.

“Now you two get some rest tonight, and we’ll go over the details tomorrow. I trust you two will make it work.”

With that, Dutch gave a nod, signaling the end of the discussion.

As you were about to leave, Hosea approached you and Arthur with a gentle demeanor, clearly aware of the tension between you two. 

“I know it’s not ideal, especially with how things have been between you two,” he said quietly, his voice filled with understanding. “But you’re both capable. I have faith that you’ll handle this just fine.”

Arthur shot Hosea a skeptical glance but nodded in acknowledgment, his gruff exterior softening slightly. “We’ll do what we can,” he muttered, though his tone suggested he wasn’t entirely convinced.

You managed a tight smile, appreciating Hosea’s attempt to offer reassurance despite the circumstances. “Yeah, I suppose we’ll give it our best shot.”

Hosea nodded approvingly and patted Arthur on the back. “That’s the spirit. Now, try to get some rest. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”

With that, Hosea gave you both a warm, encouraging smile before stepping back, leaving you and Arthur to face the uncomfortable reality of the task ahead.

The promise of the job loomed large, and the need to navigate both the heist and your fraught relationship now seemed inescapable.

The silence stretched, awkward and thick as the both of you grappled with the weight of the situation in your own way, the unspoken tension hanging between you like a heavy fog. You could almost feel the gears in Arthur’s mind turning, his usual confidence replaced by a reluctant resignation.

Arthur shifted his weight, glancing sideways at you before speaking. His voice was low, tinged with hesitation.

Arthur shifted his weight, glancing sideways at you before speaking. “Look, I know this isn’t exactly ideal. We’ve had our share of run-ins, and I’m not expecting us to suddenly be friends or anything. But, for what it’s worth, I’ll do my part to make sure this job goes smoothly.”

You studied Arthur for a moment, taking in the sincerity behind his words. Despite the tension, there was something begrudgingly reassuring in his willingness to make the best of the situation. You sighed, trying to keep your tone neutral but not entirely devoid of acknowledgment.

“Yeah, well, I’m not expecting us to be the best of friends either,” you replied, forcing a small, wry smile. “But I appreciate the effort. We’ll both just have to keep our heads in the game and get this done. For now, let’s try to focus on the job and not let our… differences get in the way.”

Arthur gave a short nod, the lines of tension on his face momentarily easing. “Fair enough.”

There was an awkward pause, the silence stretching out between you. Arthur finally cleared his throat, his eyes flickering towards you. “Look, about what happened—”

You cut him off, your voice sharp. “We don’t need to rehash it. Let’s just focus on this job so we can continue with our ways.”

The last thing you wanted was to dredge up the emotions and pain that had been bubbling beneath the surface. Revisiting the topic felt like opening an old wound that had yet to heal, and you weren’t ready to face that vulnerability all over again. 

Arthur’s expression shifted, a mix of resignation and understanding passing over his face. “Alright,” he said, his tone flat. “We’ll do that.”

With that, you give him a nod before turning heel and walking away downstairs, the sound of your footsteps echoing in the quiet. 

Arthur watched you go before heading to his room, the weight of the conversation and unresolved issues hanging heavy on his mind.

As you settled into your sleeping roll, the familiar comfort of the bedding did little to ease the turmoil inside you. The day's events, combined with the strained interaction with Arthur, made it difficult to quiet your racing thoughts. 

Despite the brief truce, the underlying tension between you and Arthur was far from resolved.

The next morning dawned crisp and clear, the sunlight filtering through the cracked windows. The sky outside was painted in soft hues of pink and orange, casting a warm glow over the sprawling estate of Shady Belle. 

You woke with a start, the unease of the previous night still heavy in your mind. The camp was already bustling with activity as the early risers went about their morning routines, preparing for the day ahead.

You and Arthur had gotten up early, each in your own way preparing for the job that lay ahead. The conversation this morning with Dutch and Hosea had been brief, focusing mainly on the specifics of the job and the logistics of the route. The details were clear, and the plan was set.

With that in mind, you were left to prepare for the task ahead. Preparing your saddle bag, you set about stashing away the essentials: ammunition, a spare set of clothes, and other provisions.

You grabbed your rifle, carefully checking it for any issues before securing it onto your horse, running a final check on your gear and making sure everything was in order.

The horse you were saddling stood patiently, its calm demeanor a stark contrast to the storm brewing in your mind. As you adjusted the saddle and tightened the straps, you tried to focus on the task at hand, pushing aside thoughts of the upcoming journey and the inevitable interactions with Arthur.

Arthur was nearby, working on his own preparations. Though there was no direct conversation between you, the occasional glance or nod indicated a mutual understanding of the importance of the task at hand.

You watched him for a moment, feeling the unspoken words and unresolved feelings between you. The air was thick with the weight of the unaddressed issues, but you both knew that there was no room for sentiment right now.

You let out a sigh before mounting your horse. The two of you had a job to do, and despite the personal issues that loomed, you had to find a way to make it work. This job had to go smoothly, and you needed to focus on that, no matter how difficult this job was already proving to be.

Arthur gave a brief nod, acknowledging your resolve, and mounted his own horse. With a final deep breath, you spurred your horse into motion. 

Arthur fell into line beside you, and together, you set out on the journey ahead.

The road stretched out before you, winding through the dense forests and swamps. The sun was high in the sky, casting a warm light over the landscape. 

The journey had been relatively uneventful so far, a few scattered encounters with travelers and the occasional wildlife breaking the monotony.

You and Arthur rode side by side, the silence between you still thick and uncomfortable. You focused on the landscape around you, the dense trees and winding paths offering a certain level of tranquility.

Arthur, for his part, appeared deep in thought. He occasionally glanced over at you, but the eye contact was fleeting.

His usual confident demeanor was replaced with a quiet determination, and the silence spoke volumes of the discomfort that lingered.

You had both briefly reviewed the details of the job, and the execution was expected to be straightforward. The plan was simple enough: intercept the stagecoach, secure the loot, and make a swift escape with the coach to a hiding place somewhere near camp. 

After a beat, Arthur finally broke the silence. 

“You ready for this?” 

You nodded, keeping your eyes on the road ahead.

“Yeah, just like any other job, right?” you replied, keeping your tone steady, though the edge in your voice was unmistakable.

Arthur sighed, clearly sensing the strain in your words. “Look, I know things ain’t been... easy between us. But we gotta get through this.”

You glanced over at him, your expression hardening. 

“I know that, Arthur. I’m not gonna let whatever’s between us mess up the job. I’ve got a job to do, and so do you. I intend to see it through without letting personal grudges get in the way.”

Arthur nodded slowly, his eyes filled with a mixture of understanding and resignation. “Yeah, I know you will. Just... stay close, alright? We need to be on the same page.”

You let out a breath you didn’t realize you were holding. “Understood. Let’s just get this done.” 

The tension lingered, but for now, it was buried under the urgency of the job.

The terrain shifted subtly, the once marshy ground giving way to the rich, green embrace of dense forests, rolling hills, and steep mountains. 

The road followed a river that wound alongside you, its surface catching the overcast sky’s light in a subdued, shimmering dance. The rhythmic flow of the water provided a gentle counterpoint to the tension between you and Arthur, a quiet reminder of the natural beauty surrounding your uneasy journey.

Arthur’s gaze remained fixed on the horizon, his focus unyielding. He kept his gaze sharp, scanning the surroundings for any signs of trouble. Despite the coldness between you, you couldn’t help but notice the way he took his job seriously, his focus unwavering. 

His attention to detail was evident as he navigated the terrain, maneuvering his horse with practiced ease. Each time he glanced over at you, his eyes were a mix of concentration and something softer.

Eventually, you reached a vantage point overlooking the road where the stagecoach was expected to pass. You dismount your horse, feeling the weight of the upcoming task settle heavily on your shoulders. Arthur followed suit, his expression serious as he joined you.

"So, how do you wanna do this? You take the front, and I cover the back?" Arthur's tone was practical, but there was a hint of something less guarded in his voice.

A smile unexpectedly crept up on your lips, a rare break from the seriousness that had defined your recent interactions, as you thought of how you approached these jobs with a different flair when you were with the girls.

Arthur glanced over, his expression guarded but curious. You continued, “Or I could play the helpless lady who needs help while you sneak up on ‘em?”

His eyes narrowed slightly, and a small, begrudging smile tugged at his lips. “Oh, so you’re thinkin’ of dustin’ off the old act, huh? Think you still got it?”

You raised an eyebrow, the tension easing just a bit as a genuine smile tugged at your lips.  “Oh, I’ve still got a few tricks up my sleeve. But you better keep up if you’re gonna be my backup.”

Arthur nodded, his smile widening slightly. “You got it.”

You checked your gear, slinging your rifle securely behind you. Arthur did the same, both of you falling into the familiar routine of preparation.

As you moved into position, the earlier unease shifted into focused, purposeful energy. 

The playful banter had served its purpose, bringing a brief moment of levity to the serious task ahead. Now, with the weight of the mission on your shoulders, you prepared for the role you’d play and the action to come.

“You think this’ll work?” you ask, your voice tinged with both curiosity and apprehension.

Arthur glances up at you as you both make your way slightly further down the hill. 

“It’s our best shot. We’ll need to time it right. ‘Sides, we’ve got the element of surprise on our side.”

You nod as you stop just before the road, positioning yourselves behind the trees and thick bushes, your eyes scanning the road for any sign of the stagecoach.

The sun was at an angle indicating that sunset was within an hour or two, casting long shadows that merged with the undergrowth, providing natural cover. The sound of the flowing river in the distance had faded into the background as you both waited in tense silence. 

Then, amidst the quiet, you both heard it—a distant rumble growing louder. The roll of the coach’s wheels crunching over the road, steadily approaching. 

You exchanged a sharp glance with Arthur, the anticipation spiking as you prepared for the imminent arrival of your target.

Peeking over the edge of your hiding spot, you counted around five guards stationed around the stagecoach, each one mounted on horseback with rifles gripped tightly in their hands. They occasionally glanced at each other, their movements synchronized but relaxed, their attention more on the road ahead than on the dense cover flanking either side—rookie mistake.

The impending arrival of your target presented a perfect opportunity. Their lack of vigilance provided a window to implement your plan.

Taking a deep breath to steady yourself, you signal to Arthur with a subtle nod, your heart racing as the time to act approaches.

You step out from behind the tree and move to a position where the road curves, creating the illusion of a stranded traveler in need of assistance. 

As you raise a hand to signal distress, you adjust your expression to one of genuine concern before you stumble forward, making sure to catch sight of the approaching vehicle, your movements exaggerated for effect. 

The guards notice your presence immediately, their posture becoming tense as they exchange wary glances. The coach begins to slow, and one of the guards shouts over.

“Hold up! What’s the matter?” His voice carries a mix of suspicion and urgency as he strains to see what’s going on.

That’s your cue. You force a shaky voice as you call out, “Help! My horse threw a shoe, and I’m stranded here! Please, I need assistance!”

You stagger slightly, clutching your arm as if in pain, and glance anxiously towards the coach. The guards’ expressions shift from suspicion to concern as they assess the situation. 

They exchange a few quick words, and one of them starts to dismount, moving towards you with a wary but reluctant gait.

Concealed by the trees, Arthur remains hidden, his sharp eyes locked on the scene. He watches as the guard approaches, waiting for the precise moment to make his move. Your heart races as you maintain your act, trying to keep your expression a mix of fear and gratitude.

As the guard comes closer, his eyes seem to fixate on something behind your back and his expression shifts to alarm, his hand moving instinctively towards his weapon.

“Hold on a minute,” he calls out, voice now laced with suspicion. The tone of his voice immediately alerts the other guards, who begin to look more closely at the situation. “What’s that on your back?”

Arthur’s eyes narrow as he notices the shift in the guards' demeanor. His movements are fluid and calculated as he positions himself strategically, drawing his rifle with practiced precision. He takes a deep breath and steadies his aim, preparing to act at a moment’s notice.

You freeze, trying to keep your expression composed despite the sudden shift. Your heart skips a beat, and you shoot a quick glance toward Arthur, who’s watching intently from his hidden spot.

The guard takes another cautious step closer, his gaze fixed on your rifle. “Seems a bit odd for someone stranded to be carrying a rifle, don’t ya think?”

As steady as you can manage, you respond, “I— I just needed it for protection. I didn’t expect trouble.” 

You can feel the weight of his scrutiny, and you silently pray that your composed demeanor is enough to keep suspicion at bay.

As the guard’s suspicion grows, he signals to the other guards, who start to move in closer, their hands gripping their weapons with increased wariness. 

The tension thickens, palpable in the tightening of their grips and the narrowing of their eyes. You can almost see the wheels turning in their heads, questioning the authenticity of your situation.

Arthur’s eyes narrow, realizing that the plan might be in jeopardy. His fingers tighten around the handle of his own rifle, ready to act. 

The guards' wary movements signal that they're about to take a closer look at you, their caution evident in their deliberate steps. You catch Arthur's eye, and he gives a barely perceptible nod—a clear signal that the time to act is now, before the guards get any closer or the situation escalates further.

With a deep breath, you prepare yourself, knowing that the success of the job now hinges on a delicate balance between deception and action.

As the guard steps closer, his suspicion hardening into action, the tension snaps like a taut wire. The moment he raises his hand to signal the other guards to move in, the situation escalates rapidly.

The air fills with the sudden sharp crack of gunfire as Arthur’s rifle erupts from the trees. His shots ring true, striking one of the guards and sending him crashing to the ground. The remaining men, caught off guard, scramble for cover as the shootout begins in earnest.

You draw your own rifle, aiming at the nearest one as you move quickly to the side, seeking cover behind a large rock. 

Your shots are quick and precise, the loud reports of your gun blending into the chaotic symphony of the firefight. The guards on horseback begin to return fire, their rifles barking in rapid succession.

Amid the chaos, you catch a glimpse of Arthur, moving with practiced precision. He’s taking them down with controlled bursts of fire, his movements fluid and efficient. He’s clearly in his element, but even so, his eyes occasionally flicker toward you, ensuring you’re holding your own.

The stagecoach driver, realizing the situation has gone terribly wrong, frantically tries to maneuver the vehicle away from the danger. His hands tremble as he struggles to keep the frantic horses under control.

One of the guards, attempting to flank you, takes a well-aimed shot, forcing you to duck behind your cover. You peer out, seeing Arthur’s form in the distance as he intercepts the guard, eliminating the threat with a single, decisive shot.

As the last of the guards fall, the chaos begins to wane. The sound of gunfire now replaced by the restless snorting of the horses. 

You scan the area, assessing the situation, and your heart starts to slow as you see the immediate threat has been dealt with.

Arthur, breathing heavily from the exertion, emerges from his cover, his eyes scanning the scene for any remaining danger. He gives you a quick nod of acknowledgment before turning to secure the stagecoach. 

You emerge from your cover and make a beeline for the stagecoach, reaching the vehicle just as Arthur approaches it, his face a mask of focused intensity. 

The driver has managed to bring the horses to a halt. Without a moment’s hesitation, Arthur nudges the man with a sharp flick of his rifle. Clearly intimidated by Arthur’s commanding presence, he scrambles off the seat and retreats into the road with a frantic pace.

With the situation now under control, you watch as Arthur focuses on calming the restless horses. He approaches them carefully, his voice a soothing murmur that cuts through the chaos. The horses’ breathing begins to slow, their agitation easing under his calm presence.

You take a moment to catch your breath and collect yourself, observing Arthur’s handling of the situation. His actions are steady and confident, and you can see the familiar ease with which he interacts with the animals. It’s a side of him that, despite everything, has managed to impress you.

Catching the subtle shift in your expression, he glances over at you. His gaze lingering for a moment. For a brief instant, his own hardened expression softens, the corner of his mouth twitching upward in a small, almost self-satisfied smile. 

You blink, momentarily flustered. You hadn’t realized how much you were letting your guard down, caught off-guard by the warmth in his eyes and the easy way he spoke. 

The sight is fleeting but significant, a silent acknowledgment of the shared success and a momentary easing of the tension that had previously clouded your interactions.

You attempt to steady your voice, but it comes out softer than intended. “Come on, let’s check if this thing has exactly what they said.”

Arthur gives a nod, his focus shifting to the task at hand as you both move to inspect the stagecoach. 

As you open the coach's doors, the sight inside is nothing short of astonishing.

Chests, small pouches, lockboxes, and crates are crammed into the coach, each one overflowing with a dazzling array of jewels and cash. Arthur’s eyes widen as he takes in the sheer volume of riches. 

Seeing the score, the weight of the day's hostility seems to have dissolved, replaced by a palpable sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

Arthur whistles, clearly impressed. “Damn, we hit the mother lode, this is more than I ever expected.”

You nod, grabbing a small bag to carefully assess the loot. This one was filled with sparkling rings and ornate necklaces. The sight is overwhelming, and the weight of the haul is tangible even before you touch it.

Beside you, Arthur takes to opening a lockbox with his hunting knife. The contents inside reveal neatly stacked bundles of cash. 

“This is a hell of a find,” he says with a hint of admiration in his voice. “Dutch is gonna be thrilled.”

“This is more than enough for the gang,” you comment, carefully handling each piece. “Who in their right mind would only send five guards to accompany this?”

“Seems like they were a bit too confident in their security. Their loss is our gain, though.”

“Let’s get this sorted and packed up. We need to move quick before anyone starts sniffing around.”

You whistle for your horse and begin stashing a few bundles of cash and select pieces of jewelry into the saddlebag. Arthur mirrors your actions, moving with deliberate speed as he fills his satchel with a mix of valuable items from the coach.

You and Arthur quickly secure the remaining loot and prepare the stagecoach for its journey before he climbs up to the driver’s seat, taking the reins with a firm grip.

“Let’s get this thing moving,” he says, his voice low but determined.

You nod, taking your place beside him whistling to your horses once more, signaling them to follow. The stagecoach lurches forward as Arthur cracks the reins, guiding the horses into a steady trot. 

With the weight of the haul securely packed and the adrenaline of the heist gradually fading, a sense of accomplishment settles in. The tense moments of the plan's execution now give way to the satisfaction of a job well done.

Arthur glances over at you, a trace of a smile lingering on his lips. “Good work back there. Reckon we make a pretty good team, don’t we?”

You catch his gaze and, despite yourself, feel a flicker of warmth. “Yeah, just don’t get used to it.”

Arthur chuckles softly. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Half an hour in, you continue your journey to the agreed location with the fruits of your labor securely in tow.

The adrenaline from the earlier confrontation has faded, replaced by a sense of accomplishment and relief. The surroundings have returned to their tranquil state, the earlier chaos now a distant memory as you and Arthur ride side by side, the silence between you now more comfortable and less charged than before.

With the sun setting, you keep a vigilant eye on the surroundings, focusing on the road and surrounding area ahead for any signs of trouble. 

Suddenly, the faint sound of galloping hooves slices through the calm, growing abruptly louder. The rhythmic pounding signifies an approaching group, and the urgency in their pace suggests they might be heading straight for you.

You glance over at Arthur, noticing his instant shift in posture, his hands tightening slightly on the reigns. 

Following the sound, you look behind and see a horde of riders emerging from the tree line, their horses kicking up clouds of dust as they charge forward. The group is sizable, and their intent is clear—they’re coming fast and with purpose.

Arthur’s jaw clenches as he takes in the approaching threat. He adjusts his grip on the reins, his frustration evident but his focus unwavering. “Damn it,” he growls. “We can’t outrun ‘em with this load.”

With resolve, you kneel a leg on the seat, bracing yourself against the coach roof for stability. Your expression is determined as you aim your rifle at the approaching riders. 

“You just keep those horses running. I’ll handle the welcoming committee,” you call out to Arthur, your voice steady. Arthur glances over, a flicker of amusement in his eyes despite the urgency, before his gaze sharpens back on the road. 

The coach surges ahead, the horses racing faster as Arthur skillfully maneuvers them away from the oncoming threat. The clash of gunfire and the thunderous pounding of hooves create a frenzied soundtrack to the chaos unfolding.

The vehicle sways with the sudden bursts and you brace yourself, focusing on keeping your aim steady amidst the chaotic barrage.

Bullets ricochet off the ground near the coach, their danger unmistakable. You grit your teeth, cursing under your breath as you see both your and Arthur’s horses veering sharply to another direction to evade the attackers, separating them from you.

From beside you, Arthur's curse breaks through the chaos. You glance over to see the road ahead sharply climbing, winding up the mountain with a steep incline.

The horses strain against the uneven terrain, their hooves scrambling for traction as the coach teeters perilously, the situation now becoming more complicated, with the treacherous path adding another layer of danger to the already tense escape.

You turn to see Arthur’s face set in grim determination, his focus entirely on the road. His efforts to control the coach are apparent as he wrestles for control, fighting against the treacherous surface.

“Dammit!” Arthur growls, his knuckles white as he grips the reins tightly. “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind for a getaway route!”

The incline grows steeper, and the coach struggles to gain traction.

You return your gaze to the unmistakable sound of more guards closing in, aiming steadily at those who are getting too close for comfort.

Their pursuit is relentless, and the weight of the situation becomes increasingly apparent. Each shot you fire feels like a desperate attempt to stave off the growing threat, as the gap between you and the pursuing riders narrows with every passing moment.

“They’re gaining on us!” you shout over the cacophony of gunfire and the rumbling coach. “There’s too many of them. We have to leave the coach!”

The sound of men shouting and the sharp crack of gunfire splintering the wood of the coach fills the air, heightening the chaos. The horses, already on edge, begin to panic, their frantic movements causing the coach to lurch.

The coach tilts precariously toward the edge of the mountain, and for a moment, you feel yourself tipping dangerously close to the edge of your seat. Rocks tumble down the steep incline as the coach seems on the verge of tipping over completely.

In a split second, Arthur’s arm shoots out, grabbing you firmly by the waist and pulling you back into place while still maintaining control of the reins. The coach rights itself with a jolt, the wheels crunching heavily on the loose gravel as it stabilizes. The sudden movement pulls you both back from the brink, but the threat of the approaching guards remains ever-present.

“You alright?” he calls out, his voice edged with worry amidst the chaos, his hand still wrapped around your waist as you cling to him for stability.

You nod quickly, forcing a shaky nod. “I’m good… Just keep this thing steady.”

Arthur’s hand slips away as he refocuses on guiding the coach.

You lean back, gripping onto the seat with both hands to brace yourself against the relentless jostling. 

You can feel the coach shudder under the strain of the terrain and the impact of the guards’ gunfire. The unstable footing and the increasing danger make it clear that staying in the coach is no longer an option.

Realizing there's no way back, you scan the surroundings desperately for an escape route. Ahead, on a flatter section of the mountain, your eyes land on a bridge spanning a rushing river below. It’s a precarious-looking structure, but it might be your only chance.

“Arthur! That bridge up ahead!”

Arthur’s eyes dart to the bridge, and he curses under his breath. 

"That thing looks like it's barely hangin' on," he mutters, a worried frown on his face. 

The two of you exchange a worried glance, the urgency of the situation clear. With no other options and the guards closing in, the risk of crossing the unstable bridge might be your only chance at escape.

Arthur takes a deep breath, his expression set with determination. 

He grips the reins tighter and steers the coach toward the bridge, maneuvering through the challenging terrain. 

The stagecoach lurches and tilts dangerously as it approaches the bridge, the horses straining against their ropes. Every bump and sway sends a jolt through the coach, and the bridge creaks ominously under the pressure of the approaching load.

The guards’ shouts grow louder, their pursuit relentless, adding to the mounting pressure.

Arthur's knuckles whiten as he clenches the reins, his eyes locked on the rickety structure ahead. “Hang on!” 

The wheels hit the first few planks with a jarring thud, the structure shuddering violently while you brace yourself against the seat, gripping it tightly. The bridge sways and creaks under the strain, the narrow path making it clear that any wrong move could spell disaster.

The wooden planks of the bridge groan in protest, threatening to buckle under the weight. You can see the river below churning violently, a reminder of the precarious situation. 

As you and Arthur drive the stagecoach across the rickety bridge, the relentless pursuit of the guards continues. Gunfire cracks through the air, and the panicked horses struggle to keep their footing on the unstable wooden planks.

“Arthur, watch out!” you shout, gripping the edge of the coach seat tightly.

Arthur's eyes dart to the side, spotting the weak planks giving way under the weight and stress of the coach. The bridge shudders violently, and a loud cracking sound echoes through.

Without warning, the bridge gives way entirely. The horses scream in terror as the entire stagecoach plunges into the rushing river below. 

The world blurs around you as you're thrown from the driver’s seat, hitting the icy river with a jarring impact.

Cold water engulfs you instantly, and the current's force pulls you under, dragging you downstream. As you struggle to stay afloat, you catch fleeting glimpses of the stagecoach being smashed to pieces against the rocks and debris.

The river’s powerful current quickly separates you and Arthur, each of you fighting to keep afloat. Your heart races, and every instinct urges you to fight the current. The roar of the river overwhelms your senses, making it difficult to think clearly. You reach out, trying to find something solid to grab onto, while the chaos of the river makes every movement a battle.

"Hold on!" Arthur's voice, hoarse with effort, barely reaches you over the roar of the river, eyes widening in alarm as he sees you being dragged away by the current.

"Arthur!" you scream back, your voice filled with panic as the water pulls you under again. 

You fight to surface, gasping for air, the relentless force of the river carrying you further away. The rush of water roars in your ears, drowning out any other sound, and your vision blurs with each desperate attempt to find your footing.

In the chaos, the water pulls you under once more. As you struggle against the current, a sharp pain explodes in your head. The impact sends you spinning, and the world around you blurs into a dizzying haze. Each breath is a struggle, the cold water overwhelming your senses as you fight to stay conscious.

The agony in your head intensifies, and the cold, relentless river drags you further from the surface. The muffled, distant sound of Arthur’s voice calling your name is the last thing you hear before darkness engulfs you.

A/N: Alright so not much going on between the two this chapter, hopefully everything is resolved in the next. Stay tuned for the next one which is the final part!

[moeitsu]

♡The Tie Which Linked My Soul To Thee♡

(Arthur Morgan x OC) Masterlist

Hey cowboys!

Below is where you'll find all the chapters to my Red Dead Redemption fanfic, I will keep it updated as I continue to post more chapters. But in the meantime, I wanted to make things a little more organized and easier for you to navigate.

Whether you just started reading, or if you've been keeping up with the story since the beginning. I want to thank you! This started as a little side project to keep me busy during my down time at work, but it's turned into something I'm really passionate and proud of! So thank you for all the support <3

!!Please be aware this fic is explicit. As it contains blood/violence, as well as other adult themes!!

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->-> Ao3 

->-> Wattpad

Summary: Kate McCanon, a young widow from the north, meets outlaw Arthur Morgan. When the two cross paths she discovers a complex man wrestling with his own sense of right and wrong. As their unlikely bond deepens, Kate becomes determined to guide Arthur towards a brighter path, even as tensions rise within his gang led by the enigmatic Dutch van der Linde. With danger lurking at every turn, Kate must navigate treacherous territory to protect those she holds dear, all while finding love in the most unexpected of places.

Story Tags: Widowed, Original Character(s), High-Honor!Arthur Morgan, Arthur Morgan Does Not Have Tuberculosis, Arthur Morgan Deserves Happiness, Chubby!Arthur Morgan, Canon Divergence, Mutual Pining, Slow Build, Eventual Smut, Eventual Sex, Eventual Romance, Emotional Sex, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Touch-Starved, Sexual Tension, Friends to Lovers, Child Loss, Infant Death, Trauma, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, Torture, Blood and Violence, Survivor Guilt, Aftermath of Torture, Caretaking, Injury Recovery, Period-Typical Racism, Anxiety, Self-Hatred, Night Terrors, Emotional Constipation, Self-Doubt, Men Crying, Bathing/Washing, Sweet/Hot, Romantic Angst, Romantic Fluff

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Ch 1 - The Years Creep Slowly By Kate becomes entangled in a heist with two strangers, Hosea and Arthur, forging an unexpected bond amidst their criminal endeavor. Ch 2 - The Snow Is On The Grass Again A fisher of men and A strange encounter. Ch 3 - The Suns Low Down The Sky Welcome to Horseshoe Overlook Ch 4 - The Frost Gleams Where The Flowers Have Been It's time to collect a debt. Ch 5 - My Heart Beats On As Warmly Now A well deserved hunt with Charles, met with an unexpected surprise back at camp... Ch 6 - As When The Summer Days Were Nigh The battle begins, and the past is revealed. Ch 7 - The Sun Can Never Dip So Low Kate is not immune to the dangers of the land. No matter how much she loved it, the land will never love her back. Ch 8 - Or Down Affections Cloudless Sky A blissful sunny day after a long hard night. Ch 9 - A Hundred Months Have Passed Kate and Arthur share a tender moment in the quiet of the night. Ch 10 - Since Last I Held That Hand In Mine The Course of True Love and other Revelations Ch 11 - And Felt The Pulse Beat Fast Arthur and Hosea share meaningful conversation after a night of advertising some moonshine. Meanwhile Kate finds herself involved in a dubious mission with John and the boys. She patches up Arthur as the day ends with an air of unspoken desire. Ch 12 - Though Mine Beat Faster Far Than Thine - Part 1 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God in a world that is ugly with violence and hate. Ch 13 - Though Mine Beat Faster Far Than Thine - Part 2 Arthur’s life is ebbing out like the tide. Kate must work quickly and diligently to reverse the cruel hands of fate. She is aided by the help of an unexpected ally. Ch 14 - A Hundred Months ‘Twas Flowery May As Kate navigates Arthur’s recovery, she discovers that true strength lies within her trusted companions, finding relief in their unwavering support during the trials of his healing journey. Ch 15 - When Up The Hilly Slope We Climbed Arthur struggles to adjust to his new disabilities. Meanwhile Kate finds a job outside of camp for them, providing a few days respite and some much needed alone time. Arthur finally reveals his feelings. Ch 16 - The Past Is The Eternal Past Kate and Arthur welcome a new life into the world. The scene brings back tender memories of Arthur's past, he finally finds the courage to open up to her about his family. Ch 17 - To Watch The Dying of The Day Say, isn't it strange? I am still me, and you are still you. In this place. Isn't it strange how people can change? From strangers to friends, friends into lovers. To strangers again. Ch 18 - To Hear the Distant Church Bells Chime The gang finds a new hideout at Shady Belle, just outside the heart of the new modern America. With Jack still missing, Kate and Arthur must work together to find him. Amidst the tension, Arthur confides in Kate about his deepest regrets. Ch 19 - We Loved Each Other Then The Gilded Cage. Kate and Arthur attend an exclusive garden party hosted by the Mayor of Saint Denis. As the night progresses, their mutual desire intensifies. Ch 20 - More Than We Dared To Tell In vulnerability they meet. As the world fades to a gentle hum, their hearts beat as if they're one. In the aftermath, quiet and deep. Love whispers promises they'll keep. Ch 21 - What We Might Have Been As tensions within the camp simmer and new challenges surface, the gang finds themselves slipping further into uncertainty. Amid the chaos, Kate and Arthur navigate the weight of their individual struggles, leaning on their bond to weather the storm and hold onto what matters most. Ch 22 - Had But Our Loving Prospered Well As Dutch readies the gang for their next big score, Arthur is sent to Saint Denis to settle unfinished business, only to face a ghost from his past. Meanwhile, Kate's come down with an illness, but a vivid dream sparks a newfound resolve to secure her and Arthur's future—no matter the cost.

Ch 23 - To Call Up Their Shadowy Forms In a chaotic, adrenaline-fueled poker game, Arthur and Kate find themselves ensnared in the deadly consequences of their choices during a fine night of debauchery. Ch 24 - The Story of That Past Tension runs high as Arthur grapples with the weight of impossible choices, his loyalty to the gang tested against his growing desperation to protect Kate. Meanwhile, Kate endures her own silent battle, caught between the chilling reality of her imprisonment and the lingering hope that Arthur will not abandon her.

━━━━━༻❁༺━━━━━ If you're interested in reading about my OC, I linked the Kate McCanon Lore here :) As well as her Face and Voice Claim <3

Spotify Playlist About me!

[junosmindpalace]

FOR YOU, FOREVER AGO

🎧 take a piece of my heart and make it all your own.

pairing: arthur morgan x gn!reader

wc: 1.7k

synopsis: arthur, and the notes he leaves in the books he gifts you. who could have figured love can transcend time?

content: established relationship, reading, reading and some more reading (together), soft and playful love, fluff with some angst at the end (arthur's death mentioned). reader is briefly said to be wearing a chemise.

a/n: i said i wouldn't write him again and here i am. writing him again. because this game has taken up so much of my writing headspace...

There’s an old saying that Arthur has heard retold in various different ways, and it went along the lines of “an idle mind is the devil’s playground.”

It derived from Proverbs 16:27: “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” something he later found out upon overhearing the phrase from the Reverend’s mouth during one of his rare sermons. Arthur doesn’t believe much in any sort of sacred text, but he could, to an extent, believe in that phrase. 

It’s a belief Dutch and Miss Grimshaw hold in especially high regard, and their incessant nagging to do away with him loitering about in the camp proved that. And while he agrees that it is necessary for everybody to do their part, Arthur spends much of his time out involving himself in all kinds of tough and weary business, and like anyone else, sometimes the enforcer needed a break. 

Though it seemed so to quite many people, Arthur’s mind was not solely fixated on his life of crime. Like many other people he was a man of love, who enjoyed reveling in Mother Nature’s beauty, and memorializing its likeness in his journal in gorgeous detail, too. He enjoyed lingering in on conversations that took place around him; mundane things like about rumors and town happenings, though they weren’t always pleasant. And above all else, he enjoyed being around you. 

Scare was the time to enjoy such leisure with your responsibilities, however. Often, he would return to camp well into the dead of night or during wind down time you had permitted for yourself (because Lord knows Grimshaw wouldn’t) to entertain your mind. Borrowing from the collections of books around camp was one of few forms of amusement you relied upon for some sort of satisfying stimulation.

Arthur couldn’t help but sometimes be jealous of this. To enjoy the leather cover of a book against his fingertips and the patches of sweetgrass and lavender enclosed around him like a makeshift bed was a luxury he could rarely afford. Yet still, he found ways to incorporate his own amusement to look forward to when he did have the off time to enjoy it.

The habit, at first, was a means of compensating for his long absences. It was almost his way of giving you a piece of his heart to hold to your chest, fill your mind, make your own with your wild imagination while he was away for sometimes frightening days at a time. 

Arthur provided you with literature of all sorts, from dime novels to hardcover books, when he encountered them on his travels. Mythology retellings, exaggerated tales of the fictionalized Wild West, dramatic historical fiction with royalty, castles, and dragons, and the sort of philosophy books Dutch enjoys reading passages aloud from that critique civilization. Each one, though unique in content, held a message with consistent love that made your heart swell and your lips stretch into a pleasant smile at the intent behind them. 

Couldn’t resist. 

Thought you’d like this one. 

All my love. 

Thought of you. 

For you to enjoy when I’m away.

To keep you preoccupied while I’m gone.

To make up for lost time. 

It's late when Arthur finds time to enjoy the stories with you, propped up on his side in the while his other arm is draped loosely around your waist as you lay in the same position, holding the book the two of you were enamored with in one hand. The firelight illuminates the pages for him to read from over your shoulder, his fingers brushing over your stomach and arms absentmindedly as he immerses himself in the world along with you. 

“This gentleman sure is a character.” 

“Ain’t he?” you snicker, taking the comment as an indicator to turn to the next page. “Almost reminds me of someone.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” he raises a brow at you, observing your expression with a tilt of his head.

“Nothin’ at all.” you hum innocently, pretending to fix your attention back onto the pages. He catches your bluff when he teasingly curls his arm around your waist and presses you closer against his chest, invoking a squeal of laughter from you as he ruffles your chemise. 

“Just turn the page.” he chuckles with a slight shake of his head and a roll of his eyes, but when you meet his playful gaze with one of your own, any further teasing dies on his tongue as his breath becomes lodged at the sight of your glow in the firelight. 

“Okay.” you tut with a raise of your brows, resituating yourself and leaning further into his grasp, to which he responds by hugging you closer. 

When your time wasn't spent under the stars, it was in your tent. Accompanied in your shared bedroll was a book from a marketplace stand you had picked out together when scouting around town. One of Arthur’s hands holds it on his stomach with his fingers at the bottom, while his other holds your shoulder soothingly. You lay your head over his heart, listening to its steady pulsing, and following the small text with tired eyes to lull you to sleep. 

Sometimes he read to you, when your eyes grew too heavy to look up at him, and your brain was too exhausted to form coherent enough thoughts, let alone conversation. He'd read with his free hand, voice gradually becoming husky with thick exhaustion of his own the more he read on. 

“Why’d you stop?” you murmured to him as you lulled you head up to look at him, briefly slipping into fuller consciousness when taking note of the absence of his voice amidst the evening chill.

“Thought you’d fallen asleep,” he replied, rubbing a hand up and down the side of your arm before planting a kiss on your forehead. You only shook your head.

“A little more?”

Arthur peered outside through a crevice in his tent to the pitch black, redirecting his attention back to you with a sigh. “Alright. But only a little.”

Sometimes you read to him, when he returns to the campsite with his brain scrambled from the hat and madness of his travels, and longs, almost on autopilot, for your presence and an extended period of rest. With his arms wrapped firmly around your waist, legs tangled on your sides and head snug against your stomach, you propped up one of the books you had borrowed from Mary-Beth, a romance that you could always rely on to knock Arthur out, with one hand, while the other carefully threads through his locks of brown hair.

“That sounds like a nice place to live, don’t it? In a house with a white picket fence and a beautiful garden.” You had asked him quietly one of those nights, looking down at his still figure, who merely hummed in response against your stomach. “Maybe outta the country.”

“And go where?” he replied drowsily, peering up at you through small eyes.

“I don’t know…surprise me.” you teased, and Arthur chuckled.

“Maybe someday, sweetheart.” he placed a kiss on the fabric of your night wear, letting out a sigh as he adjusted himself against you again. “Maybe someday we’ll go somewhere real nice.”

Amidst ever changing lives—periods of transition and transformation and hard feelings and new hopes and dreams—you made sure to often revisit his little notes kept in between the first few pages of a book picked out with you in mind and written with all the care you had to offer to one another. Nights apart we’re spent tracing the loving words with your eyes, running a nail through the loopy font. It reminds you that you lay under the same stars, the both of you wishing to reunite sooner than later upon one of the billions that twinkled in the sky. 

When Arthur had passed under the dying night sky, the menial, but important, declarations of love became lost to you. 

Focusing on anything outside of survival seemed impossible afterward, and the grief was all too fresh and thought consuming. Most of the time was spent rebuilding your life to the best of your ability, something not quite what you had envisioned in hopeful late night conversations with Arthur, but more bare minimum. No beautiful porch with a nice garden, no homey furnishings. Only a simple bungalow with a creaky bed and a bag of few possessions you managed to snag in your abrupt departure.

At the bottom of the bag one day, you find something, no, many things, you had not laid your eyes upon since before the hope of a new dawn was extinguished within you. 

It had been the first time you had felt an urge to be productive. For most of your days were spent in melancholy and anxious paralyzing thought that kept asking, what’s next?

You held them in your hands carefully, turning them over before opening them curiously, only to have your breath hitched when your eyes landed on the front.

Couldn’t resist.

You scrambled for another.

Thought you’d like this one.

Another, and then another. All of them until the reminders brought you to tears.

All my love.

Thought of you.

For you to enjoy while I’m away.

To keep you preoccupied while I’m gone.

To make up for lost time.

The rest of the night became dedicated to remembering all that you once had, and that you were once determined to have. Reading stories that always seemed as fantastical as your dreams of a sweeter life, perhaps where they even derived from. The inspiration and hope they fuelled gradually returned with each memory you recounted of your shared dream with Arthur.

He had given it to you in the end. Taken you some place nice, even if he wasn’t there himself to enjoy it with you. He’d given you a piece of his heart all those years ago, and you made it your own. Given you the resources—just enough money and a whole lot of love—to help you realize a life you always wanted. He was there; in the blooming flowers, in the magnificent dawn and dusk, in the pages of books you held carefully between your fingers. And you’d remind yourself of it every night with a trace of your fingers over his scrawled messages of adoration.

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